Philosophical Dictionary
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Hannah Arendt's Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa: When Philosophers Stopped Thinking and Started Working
By Markus Uehleke
Aristotle said contemplation was the highest life. Hannah Arendt said modernity killed it and replaced action with endless labor. Now we're trapped working and consuming instead of thinking or truly acting. Her 1958 book The Human Condition warned us: we became jobholders, not citizens or thinkers.
