Work and Culture

09-08-2014

“The earthly home becomes a world only when objects as a whole are produced and organized in such a way that they may withstand the consumptive life-process of human beings living among them – and may outlive human beings, who are mortal.”

--Hannah Arendt, “Culture and Politics”

In reflections upon the writings of Hannah Arendt, specifically The Human Condition, scholars traditionally respond to her concepts of politics, action, and the public realm. And rightly so: these concepts are undeniably at the core of Arendt’s philosophy, sometimes quite ambiguous in their definition, and hence often in need of scholarly analysis. However, meaningful responses to Arendt’s interpretation of work are quite rare. That might not be a surprise. In her writings, the category of work remains underexposed. One might even argue that beyond the chapter on Work in The Human Condition, only in the essays “Crisis in Culture” (1961) and the preceding “Kultur und Politik” (1959) does work receive any significant attention. Of course, scores of her critics have argued that the categories of human activity – labor, work, and action – are much more intermixed in real life than how Arendt understands them. But this does not undermine the basic tenets of Arendt’s philosophy.

It is important to reintroduce the activity of work into the realm of politics. Work is rendered by Arendt as an essential activity, specifically in respect to the public realm and political life. Without the activity of work, no politics – no action – would be possible. Therefore, although Arendt understood work as a pre-political phenomenon, she also insists that work is political, particularly with regards to her focus on the durability of work’s products.

[caption id="attachment_14296" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Kika Thorne's "Work Labor Action"[/caption]

Arendt distinguishes work on the one hand from labor, which produces perishable products, and on the other from action, which “goes on directly between men, without the intermediary of things or matter.” The distinctive aspect of the category of work is therefore the “durability” of its produce. Through the activity of work, the earth – that is: the globe, our biological sphere, nature – is transformed into a habitual environment for the human being, to what Arendt calls a ‘world’. These interventions mainly consist of things. The earth becomes a world of objects: houses, cities, infrastructures, tables, spoons, artworks, etc.

Arendt goes on to distinguish two very important aspects of this world of things: first, it is durable; and second, it is shared. Those two properties make the world and all of its things not quite immortal but much more durable than human life. In her essay ‘Kultur und Politik’ she writes: “This world of objects cannot simply be traced back to the life-necessities of man; it is not necessary for bare survival, as the nomadic tribes, the tents and huts of primitive peoples demonstrate. Rather, it derives from a desire to erect a dam against one’s own mortality of nature that serves as the yardstick form mortals to measure their mortality.” This artificial world of things “outlasts and transcends” all individual lives, Arendt writes in The Human Condition.

As Arendt notes, however, the importance of this “world” reaches beyond the individual human being, its yearnings for immortality, and the stability of its environment. Human beings share the world. They are gathered around objects, not only with peers but also with predecessors and future inhabitants.

Arendt here clearly challenges the understanding of the world Martin Heidegger sets forth in his writings. One of Heidegger’s main assumptions is that man is a being ‘thrown’ into a world of objects, relationships, function networks and facts. According to Heidegger, over time, the human being is submerged by these circumstances and oftentimes loses its sense of self. Only through withdrawal from this world of facticity, claims, affects, and immediate urgencies can a human being reach its true self, that is, a certain authenticity.

[caption id="attachment_13292" align="alignleft" width="300"] Martin Heidegger[/caption]

It is precisely on this point that Arendt counters Heidegger when she rejects mankind’s withdrawal from the world, a movement she considers impossible. “No human life,” she writes in The Human Condition, “not even the life of the hermit in nature’s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.” Unlike Heidegger’s instrumental approach to the world, for Arendt action and speech are always interacting with the world and our peers. It is the world that brings humans together, allowing us to witness the convergence of past, present, and future generations.

Arendt clearly values the world a common world, a shared world with fellow human beings. That point is important for the political realm: the stability of the world acts as a prerequisite for political life. It offers the frailty of human action and speech not only a context in which it can survive but also a stable stage upon which it can appear, leave traces, and receive responses. The world, in other words, provides human society its foundational ground and durability.

In this respect, Arendt comes up with her notion of culture. “The earthly home,” she writes in “Kultur und Politik”, “becomes a world only when objects as a whole are produced and organized in such a way that they may withstand the consumptive life-process of human beings living among them – and may outlive human beings, who are mortal. We speak of culture only where this outliving is assured.” Building upon this reflection, Arendt examines the root of the term “culture”, the Roman word colere, which means “to cultivate, to dwell, to take care, to tend, and preserve.” Culture therefore implies an attitude of loving care for the things that surround us, both in regards to the natural environment as well as to the cultural artefacts from the past.

To demonstrate, Arendt is quick to invoke the Greek example. The Greeks were themselves mostly aligned to the production of artefacts, a commitment that inherently demanded the application of power and knowledge in order to disturb, violate and even tear down natural processes. Both perspectives belong together. Turning the earth into a world required the Greeks’ power, coupled with the Romans’ care for what was already there.

[caption id="attachment_14299" align="alignright" width="300"] The World Culture Festival Olympiastadion Berlin[/caption]

Clearly, culture involves both production and preservation. It is what is already there and what we add to this ‘world of things’. It embraces that which already exists and aims for innovation and improvement. Ultimately, both aspects of culture come together in the human being, as Arendt writes in “Kultur und Politik”, “insofar as he is not only a producing but also a political being.” This quotation is significant, for it challenges culture with political importance, providing the instability and unpredictability of human interactions. At the same time, it yields the converse: it stresses the world of things as a matter of concern in political life.

As our treatment of the world affects all human beings, the world is therefore by definition of public interest, an object of political life. The world – these objects – need to be organized in such a way that it can withstand the ages and be shared with others. Those aspirations require deliberate political action. The worker, the craftsman, the artists needs political intuition, while the politician needs a sense of the value of the cultural field. That is what Arendt argues when she continues the quote begun above in this paragraph: “As such, he needs to be able to depend on production, so that it may provide lasting shelter for acting and speaking in their transience – and for the perishability of mortal life in its perishability. Politics is thus in need of culture, and acting is in need of production for the purpose of stability.”

- Hans Teerds