"What We Are Doing"

You'll recall that in the Prologue Arendt wrote that the central theme in The Human Condition is "What we are doing" (p. 5). By the end of the book, we realize this theme might also be stated as "Where we've been and where we are headed." As a way to summarize the meaning of her theme, what passages/ideas in the book would you point to as most significant?

Even had we not started the course with Moravec's ROBOT, the "heaviness" of Arendt's text would have been obvious. A worthwhile question is whether the effort we have to expend in order to understand even the basic theses and arguments in The Human Condition is justified by what we learn from such (a) difficult work.

Of course if you read Arendt carefully, especially the final chapter, you realize that how we justify an experience like reading her book may reflect something of the values of contemporary (as opposed to pre-modern) life. For example, deciding the value of a book by what we "got out of it" illustrates a distinctly means-ends approach to evaluation. On the other hand, accepting the value of a work as established by tradition, or authority figures, regardless of whether we understand it, seems to go against the grain of modern (as opposed to classical) education.

So why did I assign this book? Here are two reasons that I hope justify some of the sweat that was required to read it carefully, and serve as a frame for our discussions today:

• Leaving aside the question of whether Arendt's analyses are correct, her discussion of the public, the private, the social, and the transformations of our self-image(s) in the Modern Age, make us remember the depth of the human condition in a way that ROBOT certainly did not. When we keep in mind how nearly all of our basic beliefs about ourselves and our societies are historically contingent (rather than timeless), we realize the difficulty in formulating adequate descriptions of ourselves, our societies, and our relationships with other people. I think Arendt's book provokes us to defend our beliefs in the face of this recognition of the power of history, but it also makes clear that any claims about what humans are (and what they are for) need to be evaluated in the context of a history of our own self-images.
• Arendt's book nicely illustrates a modern approach to certain "big" questions before the rise of information theory and computing. As we critique her work we call into question how we should properly describe the essence of persons, societies, and the activities of everyday life. Arendt provides us with an unsettling bridge between the concerns and arguments of Moravec and Hayles when she concludes:

  "If we compare the modern world with that of the past, the loss of human experience .. is extraordinarily striking. It is not only and not even primarily contemplation which has become an entirely meaningless experience. Thought itself, when it became 'reckoning with consequences,' became a function of the brain, with the result that electronic instruments are found to fulfil these functions much better than we ever could. ... The trouble with modern theories of behaviorism is not that they are wrong but that they could become true, that they actually are the best possible conceptualizations of certain obvious trends in modern society ." (321-322)

"Labor"

We'll now finally turn to Arendt's chapter titled "Labor" and Tiffany will lead our discussion. Here is here outline:

In my discussion, i will explore three points Arendt makes throughout Chapter 3: Labor. First, she discusses "man's metabolism with nature" at length, exposing nature's cycle and how the human condition drives that cycle as well as how humans are affected by it. Second, I will focus on her contrast between the division of labor and specialization. Lastly, I will discuss her comparison between the classical and modern definitions of labor.

I. Arendt defines labor as a more natural activity undertaken by the individual to ensure his/her survival. That depiction of man's role in nature is a main focus of this chapter. She talks about the futility of labor; as quickly as a product is produced it is consumed. Mechanization has led to greater production. Herein arises the question of whether greater production is due to the quickening of this cycle, or is greater consumption due to an increase in production? Plus, what implications will the quickening of the production-consumption cycle have on the future of the human condition?

II. Arendt makes a distinction between specialization and division of labor. Specialization is associated with greater craftsmanship or skill in work, while division of labor deals with the speed of labor's consumption-production cycle. The modern age brought about division of labor, as can be seen in workings of a factory, which emphasizes faster and greater numbers of product instead of the durability found in craftsmanship. As society becomes more automated, there is a greater division of labor. In the future, what will be the limitations of the degradation of quality in products consumed by man?

III. Finally, Arendt differentiates between the classical and modern view of labor. During the classical age, labor was defined as activities necessary to survival. In the modern age, activity has polarized into labor and play. Arendt defines the modern view of labor as anything that is not play, which includes most occupations except the arts. The classical definition allowed for the division of society between those enslaved to do the bodily labor and those free to participate in the polis. On the contrary, the all-encompassing modern definition makes a more unified "labor society." Will greater automation lead to freedom from labor, as Moravec supposes, or will it just perpetuate the growth of the modern "enslaved" labor society?

Arendt's The Human Condition, Chapter 6

We've already alluded to a number of ideas and passages in Arendt's final chapter (I hope), but here are some questions to consider concerning the final sections (38-45):

• When Arendt writes "It was not reason but a manmade instrument, the telescope, which actually changed the physical world view .." (274), what does she mean, do you agree with her, and how might the computer (rather than biological theory, for example) be said to have changed our view of "life"?
• What is the significance, in Arendt's view, of "common knowledge" being all that is left of "common sense"? (283)
• In section 45, Arendt says that insofar as Modern humans assumed the world was real for the sake of doing science, once they could no longer believe that they knew that the world was real, they removed themselves "from the earth to a much more distant point than any Christian otherworldliness had ever removed [them]." (320) What does she mean and how would you either support or refute her argument?
• (How) Does Arendt's argument about our alienation from our own (human) existence, illustrated by our acceptance of anthropomorphic language in physics, apply to our evaluation of claims about humans being a variety of machine? (323)

A Brief Introduction to Hayles' Theory of the Post-Human

At the start of "Toward Embodied Virtuality," Hayles says the "post-human" is a point of view characterized by the following:

• privileging informational pattern over materiality in the identification of subjects, objects and activities
• thinking of consciousness as an epi-phenomenon
• thinking of the body as merely our original prosthesis
• thinking of humans and machines as seamlessly integratable.

As you read Hayles, come up with some examples drawn from your everyday life that illustrate this "post-human" view.

For Next Time:: Read the Prologue and Chapter 1 of N. Katherine Hayles' How We Became Post-Human. Begin thinking about a topic for your first paper, and plan to post the topic to the CHV-L list by Friday the 3rd.

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