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The Human Condition (Walgreen Foundation lectures)
by Hannah Arendt
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr (T) (1958-06)
ISBN: 0226025934
EAN: 9780226025933
Dewey Decimal #: 301
Binding/Media: Paperback - 340 pages
SKU: 30-JVQ3-FL9R
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Trade paperback in VG++ condition from University of Chicago Press (Chicago & London:1989), this is THE HUMAN CONDITION by Hannah Arendt. 333 pp includes extensive footnotes and Index. Clean and tight with a little shelf wear. Owner's name on inside cover. Very nice copy, almost like new. {chk dups}
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Subject classification:- Political Science: Political and Social Theory
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Customer Reviews
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Neither Marx nor Rand...............
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-08-19
............ever came close to explaining the workings of man as a political and social animal nearly as well as HA. Since her speculations are grounded in a metaphysics of reality her psychology is sound and policy makers of the right and left both would do well to look at her model before pursuing their dreams of "perfect" worlds.
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Debunking Hannah Arendt on Science
Rating  (1)
Date: 2010-05-02
5 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
The last chapter of the first ed of "The Human Condition" is a thinly-veiled Heideggerian attack on science including capitalized "Being" and one falsehood or false dichotomy or simple fallacy after another. Some of the nonsense is hard to track since the Rockefeller Fnd. did not require the publication to have a bibliography or an adequate index. In the 1st Ed there is no footnote to Heidegger - but his views on "handling" and "instruments" and "disclosure" and "world" are everywhere.
The worst is her grasp of science: she appears not to have read some of the books she quotes (her letters to Heidegger reveal that she only read Merleau-Ponty in 1972; Jaspers reveals in more than one place that he was in the habit of speed reading.)
In 1957 for view of "geophysics" is seriously out of date.
In 1957 she still fails to grasp that neither the STR nor the GTR entail moral relativism ( the the theories might have been called the theories of Invariance ).
She fails to distinguish evolution of the earth from evolution of nature (?) from evolution of man and lumps all 3 in the same sentence into the same glib pronouncement. This book remains popular with closet-Christian philosophers and closet-Heideggerians as well as openly Christian and Heideggerian philosophers.
See Hilary Putnam debunking Gruenbaum; see John Earman on determinism
Note the "index" has no entry for "cause", "causal" or "causality" but discusses ends, entelechy and related.
Note the index has no entry for ideas or Eidos or related all they are there.
Is the index adequate in the 2nd Ed? Does the 2nd Ed. have a biography? Why buy such a book new?
Saddest his her ignorance of the work of Emmy Noether on groups and symmetries - and almost as sad her ignorance of the work of female mathematicians such as Kovalevsky.
Arendt appears not to have understood that two bodies are said to rotate about their common center of mass; Arendt appears not to have understood the difference between velocity and acceleration even prior to Einstein; she shows a failure to understand the difference between Mach and three other viewpoints: non-geocentric, Archimedean and "fixed point". At various points it is clear that she means fixed point and at others Mach's no-privileged point.
Her view of Descartes is grossly biased (it is the Heideggerian view).
Her view of experimental physics is a mix of operationalism and instrumentalism.
She fails repeatedly to distinguish mathematical physics from experimental physics; there is no mention of Gamow and Hoyle or Hubble: she stops at Eddington.
She wisely ignores the issue of the orbit of Mercury.
She focuses on the telescope but then shows that she is utterly ignorant of the issues faced by the "makers" of telescopes about whom she glibly babbles.
She repeats Heidegger's view that no one now understands electromagnetic radiation without commenting on what Maxwell achieved in elegance and simplification ( see Heidegger's television broadcast.)
She fails to understand what Einstein received his Nobel proze for in here silly remarks about matter and energy.
Her remarks about radiation make it claear that she was unaware of what Madame Curie had done - the actions - in a book about makers, doers and vita activa (see Peirre and Marie work with Pitchblende).
She appears not to realize that uranium occurs naturally.
She confuses in vitro fertilization with eugenics.
She shows no understanding of what differential geometry had achieved.
She is wrong about Galileo's own views (she repeats views of Heidegger and Husserl.)
Is the 2nd Edition in improved in anyway?
As someone devoted to phenomenology, poetry and astronomy I can only say that her book is appalling as scholarship. Much of her assertions are mere journalism expressing "fears" and "worries" about the "modern".
I have some work on phenomenology and astronomy started at [...] and on annotating Heidegger texts at [...]
Some annotated texts are now appearing at [...]
Odd note: the 1st Ed had no credit for the cover image
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What it is that We are Doing
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-02-12
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Arendt begins her opus magnum with a proposal: she states that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 (similar to Vaclav Havel's proposal of the moon landing) has hearkened in a new age of humanity. Following this proposal is one of the most mysterious but rewarding books of the 20th century, in my humble opinion.
I first encountered "The Human Condition" in an undergraduate class regarding the post-modern community. To this day, I still have not completely digested this work. Her objective, in her own words, is to determine "... what it is that we are doing", and her choice of a goal is challenging considering what is to follow. Situating herself between a Greek model of society and a Marxist interpretation of labor, Arendt calls into question our ideas of progress, technology, and even forgiveness, and aims a withering critique at the subjective personality of the post-modern world.
I won't go into a broad summary of her points to convince you to read it, but instead implore the reader of this review to see for themselves what Arendt is doing. Some will give up on this book after a few pages, calling it semantical nonsense. Yet for those who forge a path through Arendt's intelligent interpretation of history will come out on the other side with a new appreciation for the way in which they live their lives, participate in this thing we call "work", and interact with the human community. I can't stress enough how much this book means to me.
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The Color Purple
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-10-01
1 out of 11 customers found this reveiw helpful
To judge this book by it's cover, I would say that it's red violet. I hope the content covers the spectrum of the human condition. Enjoy your lunch.
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Unbelievably verbose and difficult to read
Rating  (3)
Date: 2007-09-17
4 out of 14 customers found this reveiw helpful
I should forewarn those who are about to the buy this book that you ought to first be well read in ancient Greek Culture: philosophy, political city-state as well as Greek mythology. Arendt uses a lot of Greek terminology which can make it incredibly difficult for the average Liberal Arts student or international student, for that matter, who are unfamiliar with these these terms.
No doubt the concepts she spoke of in the mid-50s are more than applicable to todays society. She was clearly a woman ahead of her time, but much too brainy for her own good. Chapter 2 on the "Public and Private Realm" is a 50+ page drag, emphasis on the word DRAG. I'm barely scraping through this chapter.
Had Arendt chosen to write in a taut, less opulent but fluid fashion, she could have easily connected to average readers and would have been an instant bestseller. If she did in fact become one...then more power to her.
Two cents worth from a frustrated liberal arts student.
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