The vita activa of Hannah Arendt

Abstract

Hannah Arendt firmly believed that the vita activa — the life of action and speech — must form the basis for political life. Her view of what constitutes the “political” was coloured by her admiration for the political existence of the city‐states of antiquity, in which a direct, participatory democracy took place in the mode of discussion and persuasion. From this she developed her notion that politics comprised the “doing of great deeds” and the “speaking of immortal words”, much after the style of a great statesman such as Sir Winston Churchill. In addition, she also developed the notion of what may be called a council democracy, where a sort of face‐to‐face direct democracy occurred on a large‐scale but in small units. The concepts of labour, making, and action are discussed in terms of her understanding of the human condition and of the situation that would return to politics the dignity it once had.