Welcome to The Human Condition
Week 1: Prologue
Dear Reader,
What does it mean to love the world with all of the evil and suffering in it?
Welcome to The Human Condition. This week, we begin with the Prologue.
(If you read ~15 pages a day, you will finish the book by January 31st.)
Prologue: Arendt’s language
When the poet W.H. Auden reviewed The Human Condition, he argued that Arendt had created a vocabulary for thinking about our modern world. (He also said he felt as though it had been written especially for him.)
The book is an architectural work, constructed with concepts: earth, world, plurality, private, social, public, labor, work, action, eternity, immortality, and durability among others.
It is tempting to read Arendt’s concepts as fixed terms, but for her concepts were never the end of the thinking process—they were the beginning. As I lead you through the key conceptual terms that shape The Human Condition, I’m going to be emphasizing how these terms are porous, and provocations for thinking with and against. Beneath them is an underlying question: Can freedom be saved in the modern world?
Spoiler: Arendt was not optimistic.
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