Classics and the Western Canon discussion

18 The Durability of the World

Arendt seems to align subjectivity with labor, and objectivity with work. Work produces objects, and the fact that objects endure matters to us. Why is durability important? At the end of the previous section she remarked on the futility of the laboring life and its endless consumption. Is the life of *homo faber* any happier?

19, Reification

So, there is an element of violence and violation in *homo faber*. Work is violence to nature. But it isn't random violence, it's according to an intellectual pattern whereby nature becomes "reified." She takes an interesting little detour into Plato at this point where she suggests that the fact that the mental image or blueprint (Platonic eidos) remains after the product is created was "influential" on Plato's theory of ideas. Does the concept that ideas are materialized by *homo faber* help understand how it is distinct from animal laborans?

20 . Instrumentality and Animal Laborans

She observes here the "frequent complaints" about "men becoming the servants of the machines they themselves invented," and those complaints continue today. Technology has become an extension of life as much as a hammer is an extension to the carpenter's arm. We don't have to think about it, we just use it, and in many cases rely on it for life processes. Could there be a tradeoff for this?

She writes that, "For a society of laborers" (which we all are, apparently) the world of machines has become a substitute for the real world, even though this pseudo world cannot fulfil the most important task of the human artifice, which is to offer mortals a dwelling place more permanent and more stable than themselves.

21. Instrumentality and Homo Faber

Why did the Greeks reject "homo faber" and the notion of utility? What does she mean by "meaningfulness", and why is it that homo faber cannot understand "meaning"?

I am finding Arendt's references to Plato fascinating. Here she throws Protagoras's famous dictum, "Man is the measure of all things" into a whole new light. I always read this as Protagoras' argument for relativism. How much of a difference does it make if the Greek really says, " Man is the measure of all use things"?

22. The Exchange Market

She makes an odd argument here that homo faber can only work in isolation, to such an extent that " There can be hardly anything more alien or even more destructive to workmanship than teamwork." This being the case, homo faber has to seek out "the last public realm," the marketplace, to engage with others. Experience of the exchange market eventually teaches that value is a public quality. No thing has any intrinsic value. Is this true of moral value as well?

23. The Permanance of the World and the Work of Art

How do you think Arendt would answer the question, "Why do we need art?" Of what use is it?

Arendt makes a lot of confident assertions that seem to me to be perfect nonsense. Like effort that produces durable goods is inherently more worthwhile than effort that produces consumables. Or work is violence upon nature. Or teamwork is destructive. I get the feeling she's spent too much time inside her head.

In the previous chapter she seemed to be praising labor over work; in this chapter the opposite seems to be the case. Certainly both are important qualities of the human condition, in different ways. The endurance of products -- everything from practical tools to "useless" works of art -- matters, because the life of labor, where we spend most of our days, is evanescent. Arendt uses the term "futile," which I think is going a bit far. In any case, people need their things to be "at home."

But without being at home in the midst of things whose durability makes them fit for use and for erecting a world whose very permanence stands in direct contrast to life, this life would never be human. (§17, p. 135)

Obviously we need both labor and work to be fully "human." Is she describing a balance between the two? Or an imbalance? (As in the last chapter, where she describes how consumer society treates "durable" work products as consumables, which results in a waste economy.)

Sorry if this does not add much to conversation but I am really interested to see how Action fits into this “framework”.

Thomas wrote: " Is the life of *homo faber* any happier?"

She suggests that while some satisfaction can be found in laboring, it is work's element of conquering of nature and an elevating use of power in the taking and combining natural materials in unnatural ways to produce durable objects, which sounds more satisfying to me.

The experience of this violence [against nature] is the most elemental experience of human strength and, therefore, the very opposite of the painful, exhausting effort experienced in sheer labor. It can provide self-assurance and satisfaction, and can even become a source of self-confidence throughout life, all of which are quite different from the bliss which can attend a life spent in labor and toil or from the fleeting. . .

She also suggests nature is subjective but the artificial products of work are objective and serve to anchor us to our identity. This puts me in mind of archeological digs in which the only way we have to know or identify the former inhabitants is by the surviving artifacts of their work.

It seems to me that the comfortable life achieved by labor is more important than the accumulation of possessions achieved by work.

David wrote: "She also suggests nature is subjective but the artificial products of work are objective and serve to anchor us to our identity. This puts me in mind of archeological digs in which the only way we have to know or identify the former inhabitants is by the surviving artifacts of their work."

There is an element of time and memory in work that is not associated with labor, so archeological artifacts are a great example. The laborers who created those artifacts have in most cases been long forgotten, but the "glory" of the civilization lives on in their work products. It's as if homo faber is reaching for a kind of immortality that animal laborans doesn't know or care about. I suppose that makes sense if animal laborans is mostly concerned about daily subsistence. It's hard to care about one's legacy, or even plan for the future, when daily survival is the main concern.

Roger wrote: "It seems to me that the comfortable life achieved by labor is more important than the accumulation of possessions achieved by work."

It's a curious phenomenon that modern humans visit establishments where they run around in circles and move heavy objects back and forth, laboring for no apparent gain, and this makes them happy enough to pay fees for it. They call this "working out." Maybe Arendt will get to that phenomenon later.

To make sense of this chapter turned out yo be harder than with previous. I tend to blame her practice of referring to Marx where it makes the matter only more foggy.

Arendt's thoughts are so far ranging that it's hard to see what her point is sometimes. I think her comments on Marx are supposed to be illustrative of a misplaced focus on work products and labor when, according to Arendt, these things cannot provide meaning to human life. The value of labor is transitory and must be continually renewed, and the value of work products is relative. Work products like tools and instruments provide us with utility, an "in order to," but they don't provide us with meaningfulness, a "for the sake of."

Thomas wrote: "Arendt's thoughts are so far ranging that it's hard to see what her point is sometimes. I think her comments on Marx are supposed to be illustrative of a misplaced focus on work products and labor ..."

Thanks, it clarifies what she meant (my understanding was alike, but I doubted it a lot). It seems to me that if she spent less in dialogues with the philosophers of the past and more by elaborate her own points, the book would be more accessible.

Alexey wrote: "It seems to me that if she spent less in dialogues with the philosophers of the past and more by elaborate her own points, the book would be more accessible."

I agree. Her comments on other thinkers are interesting, but usually unecessary. On the other hand, she was writing philosophy, and that conversation with past thinkers is part of the tradition. But it does make it more difficult to see what her central argument is.

Thanks for struggling through this with us.