The reason why life asserted itself as the ultimate point of reference in the modern age and has remained the highest good of modern society is that the modern reversal operated within the fabric of a Christian society whose fundamental belief in the sacredness of life has survived, and has even remained completely unshaken by, secularization and the general decline of the Christian faith. In other words, the modern reversal followed and left unchallenged the most important reversal with which Christianity had broken into the ancient world, a reversal that was politically even more far-reaching and, historically at any rate, more enduring than any specific dogmatic content or belief. For the Christian “glad tidings” of the immortality of individual human life had reversed the ancient relationship between man and world and promoted the most mortal thing, human life, to the position of immortality, which up to then the cosmos had held.
Historically, it is more than probable that the victory of the Christian faith in the ancient world was largely due to this reversal, which brought hope to those who knew that their world was doomed, indeed a hope beyond hope, since the new message promised an immortality they never had dared to hope for. This reversal could not but be disastrous for the esteem and the dignity of politics. Political activity, which up to then had derived its greatest inspiration from the aspiration toward worldly immortality, now sank to the low level of an activity subject to necessity, destined to remedy the consequences of human sinfulness on one hand and to cater to the legitimate wants and interests of earthly life on the other. Aspiration toward immortality could now only be equated with vainglory; such fame as the world could bestow upon man was an illusion, since the world was even more perishable than man, and a striving for worldly immortality was meaningless, since life itself was immortal.
It is precisely individual life which now came to occupy the position once held by the “life” of the body politic, and Paul’s statement that “death is the wages of sin,” since life is meant to last forever, echoes Cicero’s statement that death is the reward of sins committed by political communities which were built to last for eternity. …
However that may be, the modern age continued to operate under the assumption that life, and not the world, is the highest good of man; in its boldest and most radical revisions and criticisms of traditional beliefs and concepts, it never even thought of challenging this fundamental reversal which Christianity had brought into the dying ancient world. No matter how articulate and how conscious the thinkers of modernity were in their attacks on tradition, the priority of life over everything else had acquired for them the status of a “self-evident truth,” and as such it has survived even in our present world, which has begun already to leave the whole modern age behind and to substitute for a laboring society the society of jobholders. But while it is quite conceivable that the development following upon the discovery of the Archimedean point would have taken an altogether different direction if it had taken place seventeen hundred years earlier, when not life but the world was still the highest good of man, it by no means follows that we still live in a Christian world. For what matters today is not the immortality of life, but that life is the highest good. And while this assumption certainly is Christian in origin, it constitutes no more than an important attending circumstance for the Christian faith. Moreover, even if we disregard the details of Christian dogma and consider only the general mood of Christianity, which resides in the importance of faith, it is obvious that nothing could be more detrimental to this spirit than the spirit of distrust and suspicion of the modern age. Surely, Cartesian doubt has proved its efficiency nowhere more disastrously and irretrievably than in the realm of religious belief, where it was introduced by Pascal and Kierkegaard, the two greatest religious thinkers of modernity. (For what undermined the Christian faith was not the atheism of the eighteenth century or the materialism of the nineteenth—their arguments are frequently vulgar and, for the most part, easily refutable by traditional theology—but rather the doubting concern with salvation of genuinely religious men, in whose eyes the traditional Christian content and promise had become “absurd.”)
Thought and cognition are not the same. Thought, the source of art works, is manifest without transformation or transfiguration in all great philosophy, whereas the chief manifestation of the cognitive processes, by which we acquire and store up knowledge, is the sciences. Cognition always pursues a definite aim, which can be set by practical considerations as well as by “idle curiosity”; but once this aim is reached, the cognitive process has come to an end. Thought, on the contrary, has neither an end nor an aim outside itself, and it does not even produce results; not only the utilitarian philosophy of homo faber but also the men of action and the lovers of results in the sciences have never tired of pointing out how entirely “useless” thought is—as useless, indeed, as the works of art it inspires.
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.
The common prejudice that love is as common as “romance” may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself.
Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action — the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors — is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents.
The ideals of homo faber, the fabricator of the world, which are permanence, stability, and durability, have been sacrificed to abundance, the ideal of the animal laborans.
Because the actor always moves among and in relation to other acting beings, he is never merely a “doer” but always and at the same time a sufferer. To do and to suffer are like opposite sides of the same coin, and the story that an act starts is composed of its consequent deeds and sufferings. These consequences are boundless, because action, though it may proceed from nowhere, so to speak, acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes
Thought and cognition are not the same. Thought, the source of art works, is manifest without transformation or transfiguration in all great philosophy, whereas the chief manifestation of the cognitive processes, by which we acquire and store up knowledge, is the sciences. Cognition always pursues a definite aim, which can be set by practical considerations as well as by “idle curiosity”; but once this aim is reached, the cognitive process has come to an end. Thought, on the contrary, has neither an end nor an aim outside itself, and it does not even produce results; not only the utilitarian philosophy of homo faber but also the men of action and the lovers of results in the sciences have never tired of pointing out how entirely “useless” thought is—as useless, indeed, as the works of art it inspires.
Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.
In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and sound of the voice. This disclosure of “who” in contradistinction to “what” somebody is—his qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings, which he may display or hide—is implicit in everything somebody says and does.
It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a willful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this “who” in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the “who,” which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimon in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters. This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for (the doer of good works) nor against them (the criminal) that is, in sheer human togetherness. Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure.
Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the formula to break the spell.
Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself. Omnis vita servitium est.
奴隷制は、それが人生そのものの自然な状態であると考えられていたため、労働者階級の社会的状態になりました。Omnis vita servitium est。
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The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new [people] and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope.
For love, although it is one of the rarest occurrences in human lives,81 indeed possesses an unequaled power of self-revelation and an unequaled clarity of vision for the disclosure of who, precisely because it is unconcerned to the point of total unworldliness with what the loved person may be, with his qualities and shortcomings no less than with his achievements, failings, and transgressions. Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others.
Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.
Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.
Action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man, as Jesus of Nazareth, whose insights into this faculty can be compared in their originality and unprecedentedness with Socrates’ insights into the possibilities of thought, must have known very well when he likened the power to forgive to the more general power of performing miracles, putting both on the same level and within the reach of man.
Tools and instruments which can ease the effort of labor considerably are themselves not a product of labor but of work; they do not belong in the process of consumption but are part and parcel of the world of use objects.
It is highly unlikely that we, who can know, determine, and define the natural essences of all things surrounding us, which we are not, should ever be able to do the same for ourselves–this would be like jumping over our own shadows.
One of the obvious danger signs that we may be on our way to bring into existence the ideal of the animal laborans is the extent to which our whole economy has become a waste economy, in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appeared in the world, if the process itself is not to come to a sudden catastrophic end. But if the ideal were already in existence and we were truly nothing but members of a consumers’ society, we would no longer live in a world at all but simply be driven by a process in whose ever-recurring cycles things appear and disappear, manifest themselves and vanish, never to last long enough to surround the life process in their midst. The world, the man-made home erected on earth and made of the material which earthly nature delivers into human hands, consists not of things that are consumed but of things that are used. If nature and the earth generally constitute the condition of human life, then the world and the things of the world constitute the condition under which this specifically human life can be at home on earth. Nature seen through the eyes of the animal laborans is the great provider of all “good things,” which belong equally to all her children, who “take [them] out of [her] hands” and “mix with” them in labor and consumption.86 The same nature seen through the eyes of homo faber, the builder of the world, “furnishes only the almost worthless materials as in themselves,” whose whole value lies in the work performed upon them.87 Without taking things out of nature’s hands and consuming them, and without defending himself against the natural processes of growth and decay, the animal laborans could never survive. But without being at home in the midst of things whose durability makes them fit for use and for erecting a world whose very permanence stands in direct contrast to life, this life would never be human.
The fact is that the human capacity for life in the world always implies an ability to transcend and to be alienated from the processes of life itself, while vitality and liveliness can be conserved only to the extent that men are willing to take the burden, the toil and trouble of life, upon themselves.
No human life, 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.
There is perhaps no clearer testimony to the loss of the public realm in the modern age than the almost complete loss of authentic concern with immortality, a loss somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous loss of the metaphysical concern with eternity. The latter, being the concern of the philosophers and the vita contemplativa, must remain outside our present considerations. But the former is testified to by the current classification of striving for immortality with the private vice of vanity. Under modern conditions, it is indeed so unlikely that anybody should earnestly aspire to an earthly immortality that we probably are justified in thinking it is nothing but vanity.
The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. With respect to this somebody who is unique it can be truly said that nobody was there before. If action as beginning corresponds to the fact of birth, if it is the actualization of the human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals.
Here it is self-evident that public admiration and monetary reward are of the same nature and can become substitutes for each other. Public admiration, too, is something to be used and consumed, and status, as we would say today, fulfils one need as food fulfils another: public admiration is consumed by individual vanity as food is consumed by hunger.
The private realm of the household was the sphere where the necessities of life, of individual survival as well as of continuity of the species, were taken care of and guaranteed. One of the characteristics of privacy, prior to the discovery of the intimate, was that man existed in this sphere not as a truly human being but only as a specimen of the animal species man-kind. This, precisely, was the ultimate reason for the tremendous contempt held for it by antiquity. The emergence of society has changed the estimate of this whole sphere but has hardly transformed its nature. The monolithic character of every type of society, its conformism which allows for only one interest and one opinion, is ultimately rooted in the one-ness of man-kind.
The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs. The driving force was life itself—the penates, the household gods, were, according to Plutarch, “the gods who make us live and nourish our body”19—which, for its individual maintenance and its survival as the life of the species needs the company of others. That individual maintenance should be the task of the man and species survival the task of the woman was obvious, and both of these natural functions, the labor of man to provide nourishment and the labor of the woman in giving birth, were subject to the same urgency of life. Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it. The realm of the polis, on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom, and if there was a relationship between these two spheres, it was a matter of course that the mastering of the necessities of life in the household was the condition for freedom of the polis.
However, of the three, action has the closest connection with the human condition of natality; the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought.
アーレントは『アウグスティヌスの愛の概念（Love and Saint Augustine）』のなかに「地上での人間の性質と 人間が世界に属していることを 克服できるのは 愛だけだ」と書いて「愛をもつこと」で未来に希望を見い出そうとしたが、それは、スピノザが『エチカ（Ethica）』のなかに「人間の感情はすべて 喜び 苦しみ 欲望から派生している」と書いて「喜びをもつこと」で未来に希望を見い出そうとしたというのに、似ている。
アーレントはナチズムの被害者ではあったが、その批判は、あくまでも外側からの批判だ。ヴィクトール・フランクルの『夜と霧（Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager）』のような内側からの体験とは違う。でも、だからといって、アーレントの全体主義への批判が霞むわけではない。
で今週は、ハンナ・アーレントの多くの本のなかから一冊を選んで読む。『The Human Condition』（Hannah Arendt 著、University of Chicago Press、1970年刊）だ。
全体主義のことや革命のことを書いたアーレントの文章は、キラキラしていた。どの文章にも共感し、好印象を持った。愛のことを書いた文章は、キリスト教とか神とかいう部分に抵抗を感じたせいか、それほどいいとは思えなかった。そしてこの『The Human Condition』のなかの働くことについての文章は、読んでいて嫌な気分になった。異和感を感じ続けたと言ったほうがいいのかもしれない。
くどいくらいのわかりにくい考察の後、アーレントは「vita activa（活動的生活）」と「contemplativa（黙考的生活）」について書く。そのなかには「Knowledge is acquired not simply by thinking, but by making（知識は考えることだけでなく、作ることによって得られる）」という文章がでてくる。
アーレントは18歳の時にマールブルク大学で教授のハイデッガーと出会い、哲学に没頭した。ハイデッガーとは後に不倫関係になる。またヨナスとも出会い終生の友になる。その後フライブルク大学ではフッサールのもとで一学期を過ごし、ハイデルベルク大学ではヤスパースの指導を受けた。博士論文の『Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin（アウグスティヌスの愛の概念）』は今でも多くの人に読まれている。
The Human Condition
by Hannah Arendt
The reason why life asserted itself as the ultimate point of reference in the modern age and has remained the highest good of modern society is that the modern reversal operated within the fabric of a Christian society whose fundamental belief in the sacredness of life has survived, and has even remained completely unshaken by, secularization and the general decline of the Christian faith. In other words, the modern reversal followed and left unchallenged the most important reversal with which Christianity had broken into the ancient world, a reversal that was politically even more far-reaching and, historically at any rate, more enduring than any specific dogmatic content or belief. For the Christian “glad tidings” of the immortality of individual human life had reversed the ancient relationship between man and world and promoted the most mortal thing, human life, to the position of immortality, which up to then the cosmos had held.
Historically, it is more than probable that the victory of the Christian faith in the ancient world was largely due to this reversal, which brought hope to those who knew that their world was doomed, indeed a hope beyond hope, since the new message promised an immortality they never had dared to hope for. This reversal could not but be disastrous for the esteem and the dignity of politics. Political activity, which up to then had derived its greatest inspiration from the aspiration toward worldly immortality, now sank to the low level of an activity subject to necessity, destined to remedy the consequences of human sinfulness on one hand and to cater to the legitimate wants and interests of earthly life on the other. Aspiration toward immortality could now only be equated with vainglory; such fame as the world could bestow upon man was an illusion, since the world was even more perishable than man, and a striving for worldly immortality was meaningless, since life itself was immortal.
It is precisely individual life which now came to occupy the position once held by the “life” of the body politic, and Paul’s statement that “death is the wages of sin,” since life is meant to last forever, echoes Cicero’s statement that death is the reward of sins committed by political communities which were built to last for eternity. …
However that may be, the modern age continued to operate under the assumption that life, and not the world, is the highest good of man; in its boldest and most radical revisions and criticisms of traditional beliefs and concepts, it never even thought of challenging this fundamental reversal which Christianity had brought into the dying ancient world. No matter how articulate and how conscious the thinkers of modernity were in their attacks on tradition, the priority of life over everything else had acquired for them the status of a “self-evident truth,” and as such it has survived even in our present world, which has begun already to leave the whole modern age behind and to substitute for a laboring society the society of jobholders. But while it is quite conceivable that the development following upon the discovery of the Archimedean point would have taken an altogether different direction if it had taken place seventeen hundred years earlier, when not life but the world was still the highest good of man, it by no means follows that we still live in a Christian world. For what matters today is not the immortality of life, but that life is the highest good. And while this assumption certainly is Christian in origin, it constitutes no more than an important attending circumstance for the Christian faith. Moreover, even if we disregard the details of Christian dogma and consider only the general mood of Christianity, which resides in the importance of faith, it is obvious that nothing could be more detrimental to this spirit than the spirit of distrust and suspicion of the modern age. Surely, Cartesian doubt has proved its efficiency nowhere more disastrously and irretrievably than in the realm of religious belief, where it was introduced by Pascal and Kierkegaard, the two greatest religious thinkers of modernity. (For what undermined the Christian faith was not the atheism of the eighteenth century or the materialism of the nineteenth—their arguments are frequently vulgar and, for the most part, easily refutable by traditional theology—but rather the doubting concern with salvation of genuinely religious men, in whose eyes the traditional Christian content and promise had become “absurd.”)
**
(Google Translate)
人間の条件
ハンナ・アーレント著
生命が近代において究極の基準点として自らを主張し、現代社会の最高の善であり続けた理由は、現代の逆転がキリスト教社会の構造の中で起こったからであり、キリスト教社会の生命の神聖さに対する根本的な信念は、世俗化とキリスト教信仰の全般的な衰退にも耐え、まったく揺るがされることさえなかった。言い換えれば、現代の逆転は、キリスト教が古代世界に侵入した最も重要な逆転に続いて起こり、それに異論を唱えられることなく残された。その逆転は、政治的にはさらに広範囲に及び、少なくとも歴史的には、特定の教義的内容や信念よりも長続きした。なぜなら、個々の人間の生命の不滅というキリスト教の「吉報」は、人間と世界の古代の関係を逆転させ、最も死すべきものである人間の生命を、それまで宇宙が保持していた不滅の地位にまで押し上げたからである。
歴史的に見て、古代世界におけるキリスト教信仰の勝利は、この逆転によるところが大きいと考えられる。この逆転は、自分たちの世界が滅びると知っていた人々に希望をもたらした。まさに希望を超えた希望である。なぜなら、新しいメッセージは、彼らが決して望むことのなかった不死を約束するものだったからである。この逆転は、政治の評価と尊厳にとって悲惨なものでしかなかった。それまでは、世俗的な不死への願望から最大のインスピレーションを得ていた政治活動は、今や、一方では人間の罪深さの結果を正し、他方では地上生活の正当な欲求と利益に応えることを運命づけられた、必要に迫られた活動という低いレベルにまで落ち込んでしまった。不死への願望は、今や虚栄心としかみなされ得なかった。世間が人間に与えることのできる名声は幻想に過ぎなかった。なぜなら、世間は人間よりもさらに滅びやすいからであり、世間的な不死を求めることは無意味だった。なぜなら、生命そのものは不滅だからである。
かつて政治体の「生命」が占めていた地位を今や占めるようになったのは、まさに個人の生命であり、生命は永遠に続くはずであるから「死は罪の報酬である」というパウロの発言は、永遠に続くように作られた政治共同体が犯した罪の報いとして死が来るというキケロの発言を反映したものである。…
それがどうであろうと、現代は、世界ではなく生命こそが人間の最高の善であるという仮定のもとで運営され続けた。伝統的な信念や概念に対する最も大胆かつ急進的な修正や批判において、キリスト教が滅びゆく古代世界にもたらしたこの根本的な逆転に異議を唱えることさえ考えなかった。近代の思想家たちが伝統を攻撃する際にどれほど明瞭で意識的であったとしても、生命が他のすべてよりも優先されることは彼らにとって「自明の真理」の地位を獲得しており、そのようなものとして、すでに近代全体を後にして労働社会の代わりに定職社会が移り始めている現在の世界においても生き延びている。しかし、アルキメデスの点の発見に続く発展が、生命ではなく世界が依然として人間の最高善であった1700年前に起こっていたら、まったく異なる方向に進んでいたことは十分に考えられるが、だからといって、私たちがまだキリスト教の世界に生きているということには決してならない。なぜなら、今日重要なのは生命の不滅ではなく、生命が最高善であるということだからである。そして、この仮定は確かにキリスト教に由来するものではあるが、キリスト教の信仰にとって重要な付随状況にすぎない。さらに、キリスト教の教義の詳細を無視し、信仰の重要性を重視するキリスト教の一般的な雰囲気だけを考慮したとしても、現代の不信と疑念の精神ほどこの精神に有害なものはないのは明らかです。確かに、デカルトの懐疑は、パスカルとキルケゴールという近代の2人の最も偉大な宗教思想家によって導入された宗教的信仰の領域ほど、その有効性を悲惨かつ取り返しのつかない形で証明した場所はありません。（キリスト教の信仰を弱体化させたのは、18世紀の無神論でも19世紀の唯物論でもなく（それらの議論はしばしば俗悪で、大部分は伝統的な神学によって簡単に反駁できます）、むしろ、伝統的なキリスト教の内容と約束が彼らの目に「ばかげている」と映った、真に宗教的な人々の救済に対する疑念でした。）
The Human Condition
by Hannah Arendt
(Google Translate)
人間の条件
ハンナ・アーレント著
**
Thought and cognition are not the same. Thought, the source of art works, is manifest without transformation or transfiguration in all great philosophy, whereas the chief manifestation of the cognitive processes, by which we acquire and store up knowledge, is the sciences. Cognition always pursues a definite aim, which can be set by practical considerations as well as by “idle curiosity”; but once this aim is reached, the cognitive process has come to an end. Thought, on the contrary, has neither an end nor an aim outside itself, and it does not even produce results; not only the utilitarian philosophy of homo faber but also the men of action and the lovers of results in the sciences have never tired of pointing out how entirely “useless” thought is—as useless, indeed, as the works of art it inspires.
思考と認識は同じではない。芸術作品の源である思考は、すべての偉大な哲学において変容や変容なしに現れるが、私たちが知識を獲得し蓄積する認知プロセスの主な現れは科学である。認識は常に明確な目的を追求しますが、それは実際的な考慮や「無益な好奇心」によって設定できます。しかし、この目的が達成されると、認識プロセスは終了します。それとは対照的に、思考にはそれ自体以外の終わりも目的もなく、結果さえも生み出しません。ホモ・ファーベルの功利主義哲学だけでなく、行動する人々や科学における結果の愛好家も、思考がいかに完全に「無用」であるかを飽きることなく指摘してきました。思考が刺激する芸術作品と同じくらい無用です。
**
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.
愛は、その本質上、世俗的ではない。そして、それが稀少であるという理由ではなく、むしろこの理由から、愛は非政治的であるだけでなく、反政治的であり、おそらくあらゆる反政治的な力の中で最も強力である。
**
The common prejudice that love is as common as “romance” may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
愛は「ロマンス」と同じくらいありふれたものだという一般的な偏見は、私たちが最初に詩を通して愛について学んだという事実によるものかもしれない。しかし、詩人は私たちを騙す。詩人だけが愛を決定的なだけでなく不可欠な経験と見なし、それを普遍的なものと誤解する資格がある。
**
Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.
行為は、捏造とは異なり、孤立しては決して不可能である。孤立することは、行動する能力を奪われることである。
**
The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself.
取り返しのつかない状況、つまり自分がしてしまったことを元に戻すことができない状況から逃れる方法は、許す能力です。予測不可能な状況、混沌とした未来の不確実性に対する治療法は、約束をして守る能力にあります。どちらの能力も、多様性、つまり他者の存在と行動に依存しています。なぜなら、誰も自分自身を許すことはできず、自分自身にだけした約束に縛られることもできないからです。
**
Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.
複数の人間は、互いに、そして自分自身と話し合い、理解し合うことができるからこそ、意義深い体験ができるのです。
**
Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action — the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors — is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents.
行動の3つのフラストレーション、つまり結果の予測不可能性、プロセスの取り返しのつかない状況、行動者の匿名性に対する苛立ちは、記録された歴史と同じくらい古いものです。行動する人間にとっても、思考する人間にとっても、人間の営みの領域が、多数の行為者に内在する無計画さと道徳的無責任から逃れられることを期待して、行動の代替物を見つけることは常に大きな誘惑であった。
**
The ideals of homo faber, the fabricator of the world, which are permanence, stability, and durability, have been sacrificed to abundance, the ideal of the animal laborans.
世界の創造者であるホモ・ファベルの理想である永続性、安定性、耐久性は、動物労働者の理想である豊かさのために犠牲にされてきた。
**
Because the actor always moves among and in relation to other acting beings, he is never merely a “doer” but always and at the same time a sufferer. To do and to suffer are like opposite sides of the same coin, and the story that an act starts is composed of its consequent deeds and sufferings. These consequences are boundless, because action, though it may proceed from nowhere, so to speak, acts into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes
行為者は常に他の行為者の間で、またそれらと関係しながら動くため、行為者は決して単なる「行為者」ではなく、常に同時に苦しむ者でもある。行為と苦しみはコインの表裏のようなもので、行為が開始する物語は、その結果生じる行為と苦しみから構成される。これらの結果は無限です。なぜなら、行為は、いわばどこからともなく始まるかもしれませんが、あらゆる反応が連鎖反応となり、あらゆるプロセスが新しいプロセスの原因となる媒体に作用するからです
**
Thought and cognition are not the same. Thought, the source of art works, is manifest without transformation or transfiguration in all great philosophy, whereas the chief manifestation of the cognitive processes, by which we acquire and store up knowledge, is the sciences. Cognition always pursues a definite aim, which can be set by practical considerations as well as by “idle curiosity”; but once this aim is reached, the cognitive process has come to an end. Thought, on the contrary, has neither an end nor an aim outside itself, and it does not even produce results; not only the utilitarian philosophy of homo faber but also the men of action and the lovers of results in the sciences have never tired of pointing out how entirely “useless” thought is—as useless, indeed, as the works of art it inspires.
思考と認識は同じではありません。芸術作品の源である思考は、すべての偉大な哲学において、変形や変容なしに現れますが、私たちが知識を獲得し蓄積する認知プロセスの主な現れは科学です。認識は常に明確な目的を追求しますが、それは「無益な好奇心」だけでなく、実際的な考慮によって設定することもできます。しかし、この目的が達成されると、認知プロセスは終了します。それとは対照的に、思考には終わりも目的もなく、結果さえも生み出しません。ホモ・ファーベルの功利主義哲学だけでなく、行動する人々や科学の成果を愛する人々も、思考がいかに完全に「役に立たない」かを指摘することに飽きることはありません。思考が刺激する芸術作品と同じくらい役に立たないのです。
**
Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.
善行はすぐに忘れ去られなければならないため、決して世界の一部になることはできません。善行は現れては消え、痕跡を残さないのです。善行は真にこの世のものではありません。
**
In acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and sound of the voice. This disclosure of “who” in contradistinction to “what” somebody is—his qualities, gifts, talents, and shortcomings, which he may display or hide—is implicit in everything somebody says and does.
人は行動と会話において、自分が誰であるかを示し、積極的に独自の個人的アイデンティティを明らかにし、それによって人間界に姿を現します。一方、肉体的アイデンティティは、独自の体の形と声の音として、何の活動もなく現れます。誰かが「何」であるかとは対照的に、この「誰」の開示、つまり、その人の資質、才能、才能、欠点は、その人の表に出たり隠したりしますが、その人が言うことやすることすべてに暗黙的に含まれています。
**
It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a willful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this “who” in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the “who,” which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimon in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters. This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for (the doer of good works) nor against them (the criminal) that is, in sheer human togetherness. Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure.
それは完全な沈黙と完全な受動性の中でのみ隠すことができますが、その開示は、あたかも人が自分の資質を所有し、処分できるのと同じように、この「誰」を所有し、処分できるかのように、意図的な目的として達成されることはほとんどありません。逆に、他の人にははっきりと間違いなく見える「誰」は、ギリシャの宗教のダイモンのように、その人自身には隠されたままである可能性が高いです。ダイモンは、すべての男性に生涯付き添い、常に後ろから肩越しに見守っており、そのため出会った人にしか見えません。この言葉と行動の啓示的な性質は、人々が他の人と一緒にいて、彼らのためにも（善行を行う人）も敵にもならず（犯罪者）、つまり純粋な人間的な一体感の中で前面に出てきます。行為や言葉で自分を明かすとき、誰を明かすのかは誰にも分からないが、明かすリスクを冒す覚悟はできているはずだ。
**
Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the formula to break the spell.
許されなければ、私たちが行ったことの結果から解放されなければ、私たちの行動能力は、いわば、決して回復できない一つの行為に限定され、呪いを解く術を持たない魔法使いの弟子のように、永遠にその結果の犠牲者のままになるでしょう。
**
Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself. Omnis vita servitium est.
奴隷制は、それが人生そのものの自然な状態であると考えられていたため、労働者階級の社会的状態になりました。Omnis vita servitium est。
**
The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new [people] and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope.
世界、つまり人間の領域を、その通常の「自然な」破滅から救う奇跡は、結局のところ、行動能力が存在論的に根ざしている出生の事実です。言い換えれば、それは新しい[人々]の誕生であり、新しい始まりであり、彼らが生まれたことによって可能になる行動です。この能力を十分に経験することによってのみ、人間の営みに信仰と希望を与えることができます。
**
For love, although it is one of the rarest occurrences in human lives,81 indeed possesses an unequaled power of self-revelation and an unequaled clarity of vision for the disclosure of who, precisely because it is unconcerned to the point of total unworldliness with what the loved person may be, with his qualities and shortcomings no less than with his achievements, failings, and transgressions. Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others.
愛は、人間の人生で最も稀な出来事の1つではありますが、81 愛は、愛する人がどのような人であるか、その人の長所や短所、そしてその人の業績、失敗、罪にまったく関心がないために、比類のない自己啓示の力と、誰であるかを明らかにする比類のない明確なビジョンを持っています。愛は、その情熱により、私たちを他の人と結びつけ、私たちを他の人から切り離す中間層を破壊します。
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
Society is the form in which the fact of mutual dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public.
社会とは、生きるためだけに相互依存しているという事実が公的な意義を持ち、生き残るための活動が公に現れることが許される形態である。
**
Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.
権力は、言葉と行為が分離していないとき、言葉が空虚ではなく行為が残酷でないとき、言葉が意図を隠すためにではなく現実を明らかにするために使われ、行為が侵害や破壊ではなく関係を確立し新しい現実を創造するために使われるときにのみ実現される。
**
Action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man, as Jesus of Nazareth, whose insights into this faculty can be compared in their originality and unprecedentedness with Socrates’ insights into the possibilities of thought, must have known very well when he likened the power to forgive to the more general power of performing miracles, putting both on the same level and within the reach of man.
行動は、実際、人間が奇跡を起こす唯一の能力である。ナザレのイエスのこの能力に対する洞察は、その独創性と前例のなさにおいて、思考の可能性に対するソクラテスの洞察と比較できる。イエスは、許す力を奇跡を起こすより一般的な力に例え、両者を同じレベルに置き、人間の手の届く範囲に置いたとき、そのことをよく知っていたに違いない。
**
Tools and instruments which can ease the effort of labor considerably are themselves not a product of labor but of work; they do not belong in the process of consumption but are part and parcel of the world of use objects.
労働の労力を大幅に軽減できる道具や器具は、それ自体が労働の産物ではなく、仕事の産物である。それらは消費の過程に属するものではなく、使用物の世界の一部である。
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
It is highly unlikely that we, who can know, determine, and define the natural essences of all things surrounding us, which we are not, should ever be able to do the same for ourselves–this would be like jumping over our own shadows.
私たちを取り巻くすべてのものの本質を知り、決定し、定義できる私たちが、私たち自身ではないのに、自分自身について同じことができるはずはありません。それは、私たち自身の影を飛び越えるようなものでしょう。
**
One of the obvious danger signs that we may be on our way to bring into existence the ideal of the animal laborans is the extent to which our whole economy has become a waste economy, in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appeared in the world, if the process itself is not to come to a sudden catastrophic end. But if the ideal were already in existence and we were truly nothing but members of a consumers’ society, we would no longer live in a world at all but simply be driven by a process in whose ever-recurring cycles things appear and disappear, manifest themselves and vanish, never to last long enough to surround the life process in their midst. The world, the man-made home erected on earth and made of the material which earthly nature delivers into human hands, consists not of things that are consumed but of things that are used. If nature and the earth generally constitute the condition of human life, then the world and the things of the world constitute the condition under which this specifically human life can be at home on earth. Nature seen through the eyes of the animal laborans is the great provider of all “good things,” which belong equally to all her children, who “take [them] out of [her] hands” and “mix with” them in labor and consumption.86 The same nature seen through the eyes of homo faber, the builder of the world, “furnishes only the almost worthless materials as in themselves,” whose whole value lies in the work performed upon them.87 Without taking things out of nature’s hands and consuming them, and without defending himself against the natural processes of growth and decay, the animal laborans could never survive. But without being at home in the midst of things whose durability makes them fit for use and for erecting a world whose very permanence stands in direct contrast to life, this life would never be human.
私たちが動物労働者の理想を実現しようとしていることを示す明らかな危険信号の一つは、私たちの経済全体が廃棄経済になっている程度です。この経済では、プロセス自体が突然の破滅的な終焉を迎えないようにするためには、物事は世界に現れたのと同じくらい速く貪り尽くされ、捨てられなければなりません。しかし、もし理想がすでに存在していて、私たちが本当に消費者社会の一員に過ぎないのであれば、私たちはもはや世界に住んでおらず、物事が現れては消え、顕在化しては消え、その中の生命過程を取り囲むほど長くは続かないという、絶え間なく繰り返されるサイクルの過程に動かされるだけでしょう。地球上に建てられ、地球の自然が人間の手に届ける材料で作られた人工の家である世界は、消費される物ではなく、使用される物で構成されています。自然と地球が一般的に人間の生活の条件を構成するのであれば、世界と世界の物は、この特に人間の生活が地球上でくつろげる条件を構成します。動物労働者の目を通して見た自然は、すべての「良いもの」の偉大な供給者であり、それらはすべての子供たちに平等に属し、子供たちは「[自然]の手から[良いもの]を取り上げ」、労働と消費の中でそれらと「混ぜる」。86 同じ自然が、世界の建設者であるホモ・ファーベルの目を通して見ると、「それ自体としてほとんど価値のない材料だけを提供する」。その価値はすべて、それらに対して行われた作業にある。87 自然の手から物を取り上げて消費し、成長と腐敗の自然なプロセスから身を守らなければ、動物労働者は決して生き残ることはできない。しかし、耐久性があるために使用に適しており、その永続性が生命と正反対である世界を築くために、その物々の間に居なければ、この生命は決して人間的ではないだろう。
**
The fact is that the human capacity for life in the world always implies an ability to transcend and to be alienated from the processes of life itself, while vitality and liveliness can be conserved only to the extent that men are willing to take the burden, the toil and trouble of life, upon themselves.
事実、人間がこの世で生きる能力は常に、人生の過程そのものを超越し、そこから切り離される能力を意味し、一方で、活力と活気は、人間が人生の重荷、労苦、困難を自ら引き受ける覚悟がある限りにおいてのみ維持される。
**
No human life, 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.
直接的または間接的に他の人間の存在を証明する世界がなければ、人間の生活は、自然の荒野での隠者の生活でさえも不可能である。
**
There is perhaps no clearer testimony to the loss of the public realm in the modern age than the almost complete loss of authentic concern with immortality, a loss somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous loss of the metaphysical concern with eternity. The latter, being the concern of the philosophers and the vita contemplativa, must remain outside our present considerations. But the former is testified to by the current classification of striving for immortality with the private vice of vanity. Under modern conditions, it is indeed so unlikely that anybody should earnestly aspire to an earthly immortality that we probably are justified in thinking it is nothing but vanity.
現代における公共領域の喪失を最も明確に証明するものは、不死に対する真の関心がほぼ完全に失われていることであり、この喪失は、永遠に対する形而上学的な関心が同時に失われていることによっていくぶん影を潜めている。後者は哲学者や観想生活の関心事であるため、現在の私たちの考慮の外にとどめておく必要があります。しかし前者は、不死への努力を虚栄心という個人的な悪徳と分類するという現在の分類によって証明されています。現代の状況では、誰かが地上での不死を真剣に切望することは非常にありそうにないので、おそらくそれは虚栄心以外の何物でもないと考えるのが妥当でしょう。
**
The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. With respect to this somebody who is unique it can be truly said that nobody was there before. If action as beginning corresponds to the fact of birth, if it is the actualization of the human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals.
人間が行動できるという事実は、予想外のことが彼に期待できること、限りなくあり得ないことを実行できることを意味しています。そしてこれもまた、各人がユニークであるためのみ可能であり、そのため、誕生ごとにユニークで新しい何かが世界に生まれます。このユニークな誰かに関して、それ以前には誰もいなかったと本当に言えるのです。もし行為が始まりであるのが誕生という事実に対応し、それが出生という人間の条件の実現であるならば、言葉は明確さという事実に対応し、人間の条件の多様性、つまり同等の者の中で明確でユニークな存在として生きることの実現である。
**
Here it is self-evident that public admiration and monetary reward are of the same nature and can become substitutes for each other. Public admiration, too, is something to be used and consumed, and status, as we would say today, fulfils one need as food fulfils another: public admiration is consumed by individual vanity as food is consumed by hunger.
ここでは、公衆の称賛と金銭的報酬が同じ性質を持ち、互いに代用できることは自明である。公衆の称賛もまた利用され消費されるものであり、地位は、今日で言うところの、食物が別の欲求を満たすのと同じように、ある欲求を満たす。食物が飢えによって消費されるのと同じように、公衆の称賛は個人の虚栄心によって消費される。
**
The private realm of the household was the sphere where the necessities of life, of individual survival as well as of continuity of the species, were taken care of and guaranteed. One of the characteristics of privacy, prior to the discovery of the intimate, was that man existed in this sphere not as a truly human being but only as a specimen of the animal species man-kind. This, precisely, was the ultimate reason for the tremendous contempt held for it by antiquity. The emergence of society has changed the estimate of this whole sphere but has hardly transformed its nature. The monolithic character of every type of society, its conformism which allows for only one interest and one opinion, is ultimately rooted in the one-ness of man-kind.
家庭という私的な領域は、生活の必需品、個人の生存、そして種の継続が配慮され保証される領域であった。親密な関係が発見される以前のプライバシーの特徴の 1 つは、人間がこの領域に真の人間としてではなく、動物種である人類の標本としてのみ存在していたことです。まさにこれが、古代人がこの領域に対して抱いていた甚だしい軽蔑の究極の理由でした。社会の出現により、この領域全体の評価は変わりましたが、その本質はほとんど変わりませんでした。あらゆる種類の社会の一枚岩的な性格、つまり 1 つの関心と 1 つの意見のみを認める従順さは、究極的には人類の一体性に根ざしています。
**
The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs. The driving force was life itself—the penates, the household gods, were, according to Plutarch, “the gods who make us live and nourish our body”19—which, for its individual maintenance and its survival as the life of the species needs the company of others. That individual maintenance should be the task of the man and species survival the task of the woman was obvious, and both of these natural functions, the labor of man to provide nourishment and the labor of the woman in giving birth, were subject to the same urgency of life. Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it. The realm of the polis, on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom, and if there was a relationship between these two spheres, it was a matter of course that the mastering of the necessities of life in the household was the condition for freedom of the polis.
家庭領域の特徴的な特徴は、人々が自分たちの欲求とニーズに突き動かされて一緒に暮らしていたことです。その原動力は生命そのものでした。プルタルコスによれば、ペナテス、つまり家庭の神々は「私たちを生かし、私たちの体を養う神々」19 でした。生命は、個体の維持と種の生命としての生存のために、他者との交わりを必要とします。個人の維持は男性の仕事であり、種の存続は女性の仕事であるべきであることは明らかであり、これら 2 つの自然な機能、すなわち、栄養を提供する男性の労働と出産する女性の労働は、どちらも生命の同じ緊急性にさらされていました。したがって、家庭内の自然な共同体は必然性から生まれ、必然性がその中で行われるすべての活動を支配していました。対照的に、ポリスの領域は自由の領域であり、これら 2 つの領域の間に関係がある場合、家庭内の生活必需品の習得がポリスの自由の条件であることは当然のことでした。
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However, of the three, action has the closest connection with the human condition of natality; the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. Moreover, since action is the political activity par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may be the central category of political, as distinguished from metaphysical, thought.
しかし、3 つのうち、行動は人間の出生の条件と最も密接に関係しています。出生に内在する新しい始まりが世界に感じられるのは、新参者が何かを新たに始める能力、つまり行動する能力を持っているからです。この意味での主導権、行動の要素、したがって出生の要素は、すべての人間の活動に内在しています。さらに、行動は卓越した政治的活動であるため、死ではなく出生が、形而上学的思考とは区別される政治的思考の中心的カテゴリーである可能性があります。
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2024年9月13日（金）
哲学者の視点
今週の書物/
『The Human Condition』
Hannah Arendt 著
University of Chicago Press、1970年刊
先週は「考えさせられる」ということでニーチェを取り上げたが、今週は「もっと考えさせられる」ハンナ・アーレントを取り上げる。アーレントは、ナチズムやスターリニズムといった全体主義を憎み、全体主義のもとでなぜ人間が無辜の民を殺すことができたのかを考え続けた。
20世紀にドイツでのユダヤ人迫害からフランスに逃れ さらにアメリカに逃げざるをえなかったアーレントの生涯は、17世紀にポルトガルでのユダヤ人迫害から逃れオランダへ移住してきた両親から生まれたスピノザの生涯を思い出させる。
アーレントは『アウグスティヌスの愛の概念（Love and Saint Augustine）』のなかに「地上での人間の性質と 人間が世界に属していることを 克服できるのは 愛だけだ」と書いて「愛をもつこと」で未来に希望を見い出そうとしたが、それは、スピノザが『エチカ（Ethica）』のなかに「人間の感情はすべて 喜び 苦しみ 欲望から派生している」と書いて「喜びをもつこと」で未来に希望を見い出そうとしたというのに、似ている。
人間に対する不信や絶望から生まれてくる希望は、未来が見通せないなかにあっては、特別のひかりを持って輝く。アーレントもスピノザも、人間について「なぜ、そんなことができるのか？」という疑心をいだいていただけに、示された希望には重みがある。
アーレントはナチズムの被害者ではあったが、その批判は、あくまでも外側からの批判だ。ヴィクトール・フランクルの『夜と霧（Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager）』のような内側からの体験とは違う。でも、だからといって、アーレントの全体主義への批判が霞むわけではない。
「全体主義の理想的な対象は、確信を持ったナチスや確信を持った共産主義者ではなく、事実と虚構の区別や真実と虚偽の区別がつかない人々だ」「絶えず変化し、理解できない世界では、大衆は、すべてを信じ、同時に何も信じない、すべてが可能で、何も真実ではないと考えるところまできている」「全体主義教育の目的は、信念を植え付けることではなく、信念を形成する能力を破壊することだ」「危険な考えなどない。考えること自体が危険なのだ」などなど、どの文章もアーレントらしい。
フランス革命に批判的だっただけでなく、イギリス革命やロシア革命についても批判的で「革命家のヒロイズムは 人間のリアリティに対して無感覚になっただけ」「人々が求めたのは政治以前の暴力だった」「最も急進的な革命家は、革命の翌日には保守派になる」などの文章を残している。
「人権は単なる抽象概念にすぎない」と言い、「現在の厳しさから逃れて、過去への郷愁に浸ったり、より良い未来への期待したりすることには意味がない」と繰り返すアーレントは、近づき難い雰囲気を醸し出す。それなのに、アーレントの文章は読まれ続けている。
で今週は、ハンナ・アーレントの多くの本のなかから一冊を選んで読む。『The Human Condition』（Hannah Arendt 著、University of Chicago Press、1970年刊）だ。
全体主義のことや革命のことを書いたアーレントの文章は、キラキラしていた。どの文章にも共感し、好印象を持った。愛のことを書いた文章は、キリスト教とか神とかいう部分に抵抗を感じたせいか、それほどいいとは思えなかった。そしてこの『The Human Condition』のなかの働くことについての文章は、読んでいて嫌な気分になった。異和感を感じ続けたと言ったほうがいいのかもしれない。
日本国憲法の第27条「すべて国民は、勤労の、権利を有し、義務を負う」の、「勤労の義務を負う」という部分に感じる異和感や、軽犯罪法 1条4号 の浮浪行為（生計の途がないのに、働く能力がありながら就業する意思を有さず、一定の住居をもたずにうろつく行為）によって拘留されるか罰金が科せられるということへの異和感と同じ感じだ。
アーレントはこの本の多くの部分を ３つのタイプの「Human Activities」の説明に費やしている。「Labor」「Work」「Action」の３つだ。日本語では「Activity」と「Action」を「行動」と「活動」、「Labor」と「Work」を「労働」と「仕事」と訳して混同を防いでいるようだが、紛らわしいことこの上ない。
そんなことはともかく、アーレントは「Labor」「Work」「Action」を厳格に区別し、それぞれの意味について深く考察している。あわせて「political concept（政治的概念）」と「social concept（社会的概念）」、「public realm（パブリック領域）」と「private realm（プライベート領域）」といったことについても考察を深める。
くどいくらいのわかりにくい考察の後、アーレントは「vita activa（活動的生活）」と「contemplativa（黙考的生活）」について書く。そのなかには「Knowledge is acquired not simply by thinking, but by making（知識は考えることだけでなく、作ることによって得られる）」という文章がでてくる。
アーレントの「Work」についての、そして「science（科学）」についての偏見ともとれる特殊な考え方から、アーレントならではの結論めいた文章が出てくる。望遠鏡という《「Work」の産物 》がガリレオなどのさまざまな発見につながり、「Work」が「contemplation（黙考）」よりも重要になり、「science」が「philosophy（哲学）」より重要になってしまったというのだ。
読んでいて私は「これだっ！」と思った。感じ続けた異和感は、アーレントの「Work」や「science」に対しての考え方から来ていたのだ。「Labor」や「Work」について膨大な量の文章を書いていながら、労働者にはなったことがない。「science」について書いていても、それは想像でしかない。
アーレントは18歳の時にマールブルク大学で教授のハイデッガーと出会い、哲学に没頭した。ハイデッガーとは後に不倫関係になる。またヨナスとも出会い終生の友になる。その後フライブルク大学ではフッサールのもとで一学期を過ごし、ハイデルベルク大学ではヤスパースの指導を受けた。博士論文の『Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin（アウグスティヌスの愛の概念）』は今でも多くの人に読まれている。
そんなアーレントに労働者の気持ちがわかるわけはないし、科学の知識を期待するのは無理というものだ。全体主義を批判したり、革命のことやマルクスのことに論評を加えたりすることはできても、社会の普通のことを書くのは無理なのではないか。一流の外科医にファミリードクターが務まらないように、一流の哲学者には専門外のことはわからないのだろう。
今の複雑でグローバルな社会では、2000年以上続いてきた哲学のアプローチや宗教のアプローチはもう通じない。この本を読んで、そんな気がしてきた。
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