Aristotle furthermore argues that only through the polis, is humankind able to define good and evil and thus justice. Humans are born without a conscious ability to define justice or virtue in the absence of the group perspective offered by the polis and so outside the polis, Aristotle suggests, humans are little more than gluttonous and lustful animals. The full nature of man can only be realized by virtue of the village and polis, which afford individuals the extra time necessary for considerations outside those relating to daily recurrent needs. The individual is incomplete without the polis and thus cannot exist as a human disconnected from it.
At the same time, human existence may not be separated from those daily recurring needs. In Aristotle’s sketch of the good life (the life where true felicity can be found) three elements are offered. The first two categories are goods of the body and external goods. Goods of the body refer to a concern for good health and external goods relate to the material world humans create. The third and most primary of the divisions Aristotle outlines is that of the goods of the soul. Goods of the soul refer to such notions as temperance, courage, wisdom, fortitude, and justice among others. The important Arendtian connection can be found here. Both Arendt and Aristotle believe that the material world services the world of action and contemplation. Aristotle argues that the goods of the body must be maintained for the sake of the soul and that the world of external goods is maintained by the goods of the soul. His supporting logic argues that because our soul is inherently more valuable compared to material goods or even the body itself, it must be more important. In Arendt’s understanding, Aristotle’s external and bodily goods reflect what she terms the private sphere. Within this private household or economic sphere, the biological processes of life are maintained and it is only when one enters into the public realm of politics, that true freedom, freedom from those biological processes, can be experienced. She terms this freedom the vita activa and agrees with Aristotle that it is the highest good.
Vita Activa as the Highest Good
Arendt’s twists on Aristotle’s elements of the good life are represented in her notion of vita activa. She argues, that life was given to man under the fundamental conditions of labor, work, and action. Labor relates to the ‘biological processes of life’ in the sense that it supports the existence of life. For Arendt and Aristotle, this support system is the basis of the private sphere of existence and it occurs within the household.
Arendt’s second basic element of the human condition is that of work. The element of work relates to the unnatural or fabricated elements of the human existence. She argues that individual life resides within this realm and that it is from this realm that humans find some solace from the harsh realities of life. It provides a sense of permanence and durability in the context of human time, which is fleeting. This notion relates directly to Aristotle’s notion of external goods, which he recognized as an enjoyable supplement to the difficulties of life.
The final aspect of Arendt’s Aristotelian notion of the constituent elements of the good life is that of action. Action relates to Arendt’s fundamental conception of the human condition as a condition of plurality. As well, action pertains to the relationships between the plurality of men on earth. It is that plurality, which provides for the perspective needed to understand the normative values associated with the Aristotelian parallel of goods of the soul. Together, Arendt argues, “labor, work and action have the task to provide and preserve the world for, to foresee and to reckon with, the constant influx of new comers who are born in to the world as strangers.”
Arendt argues the public and private spheres are connected only in the sense that mastery over the private is necessary so that the freedom of the public can be experienced. This parallels Aristotle’s notion that the ‘goods of the body’ and ‘external goods’ exist as a function of the higher and inherently more valuable ‘goods of the soul.’ Aristotle’s concomitant belief in the primacy of the ‘goods of the soul’ completes the parallel of dichotomies between the two thinkers. Neither thinker believes that politics should come to represent a means to protect one society or another. Freedom exists only as a function of being able to pursue pluralist opinions about the nature of society at any given time. For Arendt and Aristotle, political affirmation of one social goal over another is itself apolitical. Indeed, all Greek philosophers took for granted this notion.
Only when self-sufficiency, what Arendt terms the biological necessities of life, had been satisfied, could freedom be experienced. For Aristotle and Arendt, the polis represents the experience of self-sufficiency, and thus the political life (life in the polis), represented the highest form of being. For Arendt, this was the vita activa (the public life of action), and according to Aristotle, it was the essential condition for felicity. This stands as an affirmation of the singularity of opinion of the two thinkers on the primacy of the public realm.
The Modern Reversal
According to Arendt, after the death of Socrates the Greek philosophers changed their minds about the abilities of the state to provide for the highest good of man. At this time she argues, “the men of thought and the men of action began to take different paths.” They decided that they had discovered some higher ordering principal to that which had ruled the polis before. By Augustine’s time, a complete reversal of Arendt’s notion of vita activa and Aristotle’s bios politikos had taken place. Arendt expresses her discomfort with this change by using the notions of immortality and eternity.
Arendt argues, that the vita contemplativa, the life of the philosopher concerned only with the eternal, and the vita activa, the political life, are not mutually exclusive. To Plato and Socrates, a thinker “ceases to be concerned primarily with eternity” if he acts at all. Whereas for, Arendt and Aristotle, the immortality of eternity is achieved as a synthesis of thought and action. Plato’s cave metaphor outlines his argument that “the philosopher’s experience of the eternal can only occur outside the realm of human affairs and the plurality of men.” The Arendtian/Aristotelian notion that life exists only within the collective plurality of the polis, suggests that Plato’s philosophers experience a kind of death when brought out of the cave. According to Plato, the act of leaving the cave is undertaken alone and the philosopher is followed by no one. Arendt argues that, “this is precisely what separates the vita contemplativa and vita activa in medieval thought.”
The modern age, which Arendt and Aristotle (undoubtedly) are most critical of, began in the 17th century. The Reformation, the discovery of America, and the invention of the telescope marked the beginning of a new era. The reversal became complete after two historical occurrences. First, the fall of the Roman Empire, which clearly displayed the impermanence of any thing made by man, and secondly, the rise of the Christian gospel to primacy in western religious tradition. Christians believe the eternal life following the material existence of man on earth is the most significant, thus pushing the real life action Arendt and Aristotle favor out of the spotlight. Both the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christian ethic “made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary.” As Arendt puts it, the vita activa and bios politikos became “the handmaidens of contemplation.” This is problematic for Arendt (and would be for Aristotle) because the earthly attempts to achieve immortality are, in her opinion, the lifeblood of the vita activa. And she furthermore offers that, the reversal was so successful that even the rise of the secular and the reduction of the realm of thought in modern times did not help in resurrecting vita activa from its fate.
Conclusion
Arendt’s classical critique of modernity has been criticized by some theorists for using a base, which is inherently flawed. The stark inequality of the people who weren’t citizens of the polis, among other illiberal elements, are cited as proof of her dubious perspective. Arendt’s classical lens is not a reflection of her desire to resurrect the past however. Rather, her work is only an attempt to show the commonality of the past and present.
Arendt and Aristotle see, in common, the value of the perspective offered by the inherent plurality of the polis. Only through this perspective are individuals able to gain an understanding of the higher normative concepts in life. They agree that though the biological necessities of life inherent in the private sphere of existence must be present for life to exist, they only serve to facilitate the higher existence of public life. Higher existence exists in public life, according to the two thinkers, because it is only in the public sphere that humanity’s distinctive qualities are expressed.
Arendt utilizes these Aristotelian perspectives to offer a critique of modernity, which she suggests reflects an inversion of the vita activa, or the elements of the good life. This inversion was caused by the historically coincidental rise of the social (the needs of the people) and the concurrent decline of the public (what people think). Arendt argues that the resounding success of the private over the public has left humanity in a society ruled by no one. Where as despotism and absolutism were the first forms of rule, rule by no one (bureaucratic rule) is the current state of affairs. This rule by no one comes about because of the estrangement of politics and the public realm from everyday existence. The exclusion of individual normative content from the practice of politics is antithetical to the essential plurality of humans, which she believes is represented in Aristotle’s notion of the polis, and may result in rule by no one turning out “to be one of governments cruelest and most tyrannical versions.” The conformity demanded by society “excludes the possibility of action” because, she says, societies rules normalize citizens and discourage originality. That conformity ensures that behavior replaces action as the primary mode of human interaction. It can be inferred through Aristotle’s commonalities with Arendt, that he too would offer a similar critique about the nature of modern society. Aristotle believed, the same as Arendt, that the public life is primary because in it our distinctive humanity can be found. Arendt reflects with affection on Aristotle’s time “when not life, but the world was still the highest good of man.” It was a time of clarity when acting was primary. She argues, that “as long as the polis is there to inspire men to dare the extraordinary, all things are safe: if it perishes everything is lost.”
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