The thinker Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) has made many contributions to the philosophy of post-war twentieth century Europe. However right here we need to deal with one in every of her questions: What’s it that makes us human? How does our humanity relate to the work we do daily? Is there work that promotes our humanity and work that degrades it? And the way can we all know one from the opposite?
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) distinguishes three kinds of work: Labor, which is figure for survival. Work, which creates a product, a “murals.” And, lastly, motion, which is inventive exercise, the making of one thing new out of the liberty to create for creation’s sake. Motion is, subsequently, the best sort of human exercise, an expression of basic freedom of human beings.
Hannah Arendt says: If we take a look at the work individuals do, we will clearly establish three differing types. These several types of work even have very totally different results on our humanity.
First comes what she calls “labor.” Labor is figure that we do to be able to survive. Washing one’s garments, as an example, or cooking, or procuring. If we take a look at labor, it shortly turns into clear that it by no means ends. You’ll be able to slave all day simply washing issues, and procuring, and cooking, and cleansing the home, however the subsequent day, or the subsequent week, you’ll must do the identical chores yet again. Labor sustains life, nevertheless it doesn’t produce any consequence past that. Nothing stays from the as soon as clear home after it has grow to be soiled once more. And in the event you clear it once more (as you need to) every week later it’ll look soiled as soon as extra. Labor of this sort is hardly the stuff that elevates one’s human qualities. It’s slaving away, like an animal does, and it bears no fruits in the long run moreover survival.
Subsequent comes “work.” We use the phrase generally to explain issues, merchandise: A murals. Her life’s work. A author’s collected works. Working is a course of that culminates in a bit of labor, an final result, one thing tangible, one thing that may final. Working creates worth past mere survival. Additionally, working creates a heritage. One thing to move on to the subsequent technology. Historic temples, church buildings, statues, footage, books, songs, symphonies. The cultural heritage of mankind is the product of labor.
“Are you working?” – “No, I’m laboring.” You get the purpose.
In our society, work is threatened by labor. A world that desires to eat issues quick and low-cost favors labor over work. Why make issues everlasting? Capitalism rewards the disposable. Purchase a fridge and throw it away after the guarantee expires. Purchase a telephone and throw it away after a brand new mannequin comes out. Thus, the work of creating a fridge, or telephone, is degraded to labor, because the fruits of the work lose their permanence. For Hannah Arendt, permanence is the enemy of consumerism. So as to maintain the economic system going, work must be became labor. Artists and craftsmen must be modified again into being laborers, slaves who create disposable objects in a endless cycle of manufacturing and destruction.
However regardless of their variations, each labor and work are rooted in the identical want for survival. An architect who builds a home works no much less from necessity than somebody who simply cleans that home as a laborer. Each are unfree, as a result of they haven’t any selection however to do what they’re doing, be it labor or work. The work additionally has to suit different constraints: the writer calls for a specific sort of guide. The museum desires that sort of paintings, and so forth. Work is constrained by necessity. Freedom is expressed solely in a 3rd sort of exercise, which Hannah Arendt calls “motion.”
Motion, for Arendt, is to start one thing new. To create one thing, not as a matter of response to necessity, however simply out of the want to create new issues and to place them into the world for all to see. Motion is subsequently an expression of 1’s freedom. And since I’m free to decide on the way to act, after I do select one plan of action, this selection expresses who I’m: my very own priorities and what’s vital to me. On this, Hannah Arendt is just not thus far faraway from Erich Fromm, who makes a similar, crucial distinction between busy-ness and truly productive action.
Allow us to go searching. As our world favors labor over work, it additionally presents fewer and fewer alternatives without cost, inventive motion. Expressing one’s personal creativity has grow to be a luxurious that solely few can afford. Arendt appeared again to Historic Greece because the time when individuals had been free to behave and to publicly show their creativity and their selections. Immediately our selections are sometimes dictated by customized, ads, legal guidelines, political correctness, or censorship.
We’re about to lose what makes us human, Arendt says: our freedom to precise ourselves. We’re about to get used to being lower than human, lower than we needs to be. We’re getting used to being a mass, a labor drive, human assets, issues.
Can we need to give up with no struggle?
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