NASARA JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

A critical look into the condition of man in the contemporary time reveals apparent aberration. Hannah Arendt describes this situation as “active participation of man in his society”. In The Human Condition, Arendt explores this very idea of the vita activa or the active life. For her, the vita activameans human life insofar as it is actively engaged in doing something. That “activity” is one of the fundamental aspects of the human condition. Thus, Arendt identifies three broad categories of activity, namely: labour, work; and action. This paper examined the concepts of labour, work and action in Hannah Arendt's philosophy. The work employed the qualitative research design where data were sourced from books, journals, periodicals and the internet, to philosophically examine Hannah Arendt's idea of labour, work and action. In line with the above, the historical method was also adopted to situate Arendt's ideas within philosophic history; the expository method employed was to establish Arendt's thought on labour and action, while the e–valuative method was adopted to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of Arendt's position.The researchers observed that the myriad of challenges bedevilling man, insecurity, political, social, economic and religious upheavals etc. clearly portray that the crave for biological and economic survival by humans has taken over true political thinking and acting. The work, therefore, concluded that, there is need for social political and moral re-engineering of the human community. This is the only way the common man would be liberated from the shackles of alienation, and deploys his labour, work and action for flourishing.

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