Hannah Arendt’s thoughts in relation to occupational science: A response to Turnbull

ABSTRACT

In his response to our article “Hannah Arendt’s vita activa: A valuable contribution to occupational science,” Turnbull (2018) outlined some tensions he perceived with our discussion of “her approach to philosophy, politics and science”. In our reply, we express appreciation of his interest in Arendt related to occupational science and the contribution his article makes, as well as clarifying some points in his critique. We argue that Turnbull’s main arguments do not address our primary purpose of presenting Arendt’s vita activa and provide examples of its relevance for occupational science. We thus focused on activity-related aspects of Arendt’s thoughts, to raise awareness of this work amongst occupational scientists. However, we are thankful for Turnbull’s reflections, which broaden the insights of Arendt’s thinking and contribute to a better understanding of human occupation.

在回应我们的文章“Hannah Arendt的>生命活素>：对休闲科学的有价值的贡献”时，Turnbull（2017）概述了他所认识到的我们在讨论“她的哲学，政治和科学方法”时的一些争议。 在我们的答复中，我们就他对阿伦特关于休闲科学的兴趣以及他的文章所做的贡献表示赞赏，并澄清他的批评中的一些观点。 我们认为，特恩布尔的主要论点并不涉及我们提出阿伦特的生命活素的主要目的，并提供了与休闲科学相关的例子。 因此，我们将重点放在阿伦特思想的活动相关方面，以引起休闲科学家对这项工作的注意。 但是，我们非常感谢特恩布尔的反思，他拓宽了阿伦特思想的内涵，帮助我们更好地了解人类休闲。

En su respuesta a nuestro artículo “Hannah Arendt's >vita activa>: A valuable contribution to occupational science”, Turnbull (2017) resumió algunas de las tensiones que había percibido en nuestra discusión sobre “su enfoque en torno a filosofía, política y ciencia”. A su vez, en nuestra respuesta expresamos aprecio por su interés en aquellos aspectos del trabajo de Arendt vinculados a la ciencia ocupacional y por el aporte que significó su artículo, además de aclarar algunos puntos de su crítica. Sostenemos que los principales argumentos de Turnbull no abordan el objetivo principal que perseguíamos al presentar la >vita activa> de Arendt, y proporcionamos algunos ejemplos que dan cuenta de su pertinencia para la ciencia ocupacional. Por eso nos centramos en los aspectos relacionados con actividades propias del pensamiento de Arendt, a fin de sensibilizar a los científicos ocupacionales sobre esta obra. Aun así, agradecemos las reflexiones de Turnbull, toda vez que amplían los hallazgos derivados del pensamiento de Arendt y ayudan a comprender mejor la ocupación humana.

KEYWORDS:

• Individualistic
• Pluralistic
• Vita activa
• Vita contemplativa

In writing our previous article, we aimed to “present Hannah Arendt and vita activa; to provide examples of relevance for occupational science and how this philosophy can contribute to a broader perspective on human occupation” (Jansson & Wagman, 2017, p. 291). Because capturing all aspects of Arendt’s immense work in one article is impossible, our intention was to present the writings that we considered to have the most apparent and close connection to occupational science, i.e., her work on vita activa, rather than a bibliography on Arendt. This does not mean that we consider vita activa as a standalone concept, albeit, in a sense, Arendt herself demarcated the concept when she investigated the conditions for human activity, vita activa, in a separate work, The Human Condition (1958/1998).

We appreciate Turnbull’s explicit interest in Arendt’s writings, since we are convinced of her potential to inform occupational science in a range of issues. We were also pleased to notice that Turnbull considered our article to make “a valuable contribution to occupational science” (Turnbull, 2018, p. 240). However, he also stated that it contains “a small number of incomplete interpretations that, if overlooked, threaten to distort overall comprehension of Arendt’s thought” (p. 6). His criticism, as we interpret it, relates to four different aspects; that we are focusing on vita activa at the expense of vita contemplativa and overlooking her thoughts about the importance of thinking, human nature, occupation as conditioned, and her interest in plurality. We will address each of these aspects later.

Taken together though, our article focused on activity-related aspects of Arendt’s thoughts, and was primarily intended to raise occupational scientists’ awareness of this work without decades of previous knowledge. It is our impression that Turnbull’s main point is that we should have “dug deeper” into Arendt and her potential value for occupational science by including more of her writings and the writings of philosophers that influenced her. While we definitively agree about the value of this, we do consider it to be step number two, i.e., beyond our introductory text focusing on one, however important, of her writings. Therefore, we are very pleased to see that Turnbull has begun this endeavour.

It is also our opinion that Turnbull over interpreted our associations between Arendt’s thoughts and occupational science. Turnbull (2018) argued that we made “direct assimilations” (p. 243) and were “importing various of her concepts” (p. 243) that can be “neatly fitted into” (p. 242) occupational science. Rather than attempt to assimilate or to fit her in, our intention was to point out similarities and make associations, as it is our firm belief that Arendt’s work would benefit occupational science.

Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa

Returning to the points Turnbull critiqued in our text, we begin with vita activa and vita contemplativa as we consider that his primary critique was that we do not fully recognise the latter. This criticism is, for instance, exemplified by the statement that “nothing can support the claim that Arendt thought that contemplation arises, primarily, as a need” (Turnbull, 2018, p. 242). We had no ambition to penetrate Arendt’s thoughts about the rise of vita contemplativa, however, Arendt did use the word “need” in her texts. “Traditionally, therefore, the term vita activa receives its meaning from the vita contemplativa; … its very restricted dignity is bestowed upon it because it serves the needs [our italics] and wants of contemplation in a living body” (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 16).

Turnbull (2018) also delved into Arendt’s thoughts about the importance of thinking, stating that “it is necessary to regard thinking as the primary aim in all her works” (p. 240). We do agree that thinking is an important theme in Arendt’s work and appreciate that Turnbull raised this issue. Regarding thinking, it is our opinion that it is important to emphasise that Arendt raised the importance of reflective thinking, as opposed to any instrumental thinking that is limited to conventional rules (Arendt, 1978/1981; Morgan, 2016). Reflective thinking allows for alternative viewpoints and positions:

… the more people’s standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion. (Arendt, 1993, p. 241)

Arendt considered the potential of reflective thinking, and often used the phrase “thinking without banisters” i.e. thinking that is not fenced in or without safeguarding rails (“Denken ohne Geländer” as she expressed it in her native language), as a way of preventing evil and deleterious doing.

Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of specific content and quite independent of results, could this activity be of such a nature that it ‘conditions’ men against evil-doing? (Arendt, 1978/1981, p. 5)

Here, we believe, the link between thinking and acting is obvious. From our point of view, it is a clear and important connection between thinking and action in Arendt’s work.

The Existence of Human Nature

In relation to the writing of vita activa and vita contemplativa, we wrote that “both activity and contemplation is part of human nature” (p. 293). Turnbull (2018) critiqued us for this, describing Arendt’s questioning of human nature. He is right in this and our wording could have been more carefully chosen to avoid misinterpretation. It is important to notice, though, that Arendt did not deny the existence of human nature, but rather regarded it as an unanswerable question. She questioned if humans have a nature “in the same sense as other things” (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 10), but did apply the concept of human nature in earlier works such as The Origin of Totalitarianism. There she stated; “What totalitarian ideologies therefore aim at is not the transformation of the outside world or the revolutionizing transmutation of society, but the transformation of human nature itself” (Arendt, 1951/2004, p. 458). Her analysis of totalitarianism, along with all inexplicable human deeds, led Arendt to doubt the existence of any human nature.

Among other scholars, there are opinions that Arendt’s analysis of humans can be interpreted as representing a form of human nature (Dossa, 1989; Kupperman, 2010). For instance, Dossa (1989), in his interpretation of Arendt, stated that “her unargued claim is that human nature is not a static, stable property” (Dossa, 1989, p. 48). Dossa continued: “By human nature she actually means that part of man’s nature which is farthest removed from Nature itself” (Dossa, 1989, p. 50).

Whether Occupation is Conditioned

Another of Turnbull’s (2018) critiques concerns how we present the concept “condition,” stating that: “Jansson and Wagman claimed that Arendt wrote that the lives of humans are ‘always conditioned’. However, the insertion of ‘always’ is their term, not hers” (p. 242). In opposition to what Turnbull claims, Arendt did clearly express the opinion that human activity is always conditioned and it is her term: “This is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings” (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 9). This is also claimed in her later works such as The Life of the Mind, where she used the wording “totally conditioned existentially”, writing:

Men, though they are totally conditioned existentially – limited by the time span between birth and death, subject to labor in order to live, motivated to work in order to make themselves at home in the world, and roused to action in order to find their place in the society of their fellow-men – can mentally transcend all these conditions, but only mentally, never in reality … (Arendt, 1978/1981, pp. 70-71)

Turnbull may have overlooked Arendt’s distinction between “conditioned” human activity, vita activa, which is the focus of our article, and mental activity, which Arendt meant was unconditioned. Moreover, Turnbull raised Arendt’s notion of never absolutely conditioned as an argument for not always being conditioned. We have, in line with Dossa (1989), understood Arendt’s notion of not absolutely conditioned as not being determined, however still conditioned. To quote Dossa (1989): “It must be stressed that men and things form the conditions of life, but they never determine life” (p. 50), i.e., to be conditioned does not mean to be determined.

Individualistic and Pluralistic

Turnbull (2018) related Arendt’s interest in thinking to a criticism of our text, saying that she was interested in plurality.

The claim [by Jansson and Wagman] that Arendt was more interested in collective understandings than personal ones, of plural rather than singular humans, will be contested through a discussion of the centrality of thinking throughout Arendt’s work, an activity that is individual and personal to its core. (Turnbull, 2018, p. 242)

Turnbull’s critique takes as its starting point what he called centrality of thinking, vita contemplativa and, consistent with that perspective, concluded that Arendt had an individualistic approach. However, we grounded our argument in vita activa and from that perspective (as might be expected) concluded that Arendt had a pluralistic approach. Yet, we appreciate that Turnbull raised this distinction between plurality and individuality in Arendt’s work, which was not clearly presented in our article. We think Arendt’s perspective on the matter is conveyed in the following quotation: “Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives or will live” (Arendt, 1958/1998, p. 8). In this sentence, Arendt expressed both the particularity of the unique individual and the universality of being human, which is realised in political life and action (Arendt, 1958/1998; Morgan, 2016).

Concluding Thoughts

Finally, we want to raise some issues that Turnbull did not highlight in his response, which we consider to be occupational problems of urgent importance for both individuals and for human co-existence. As we wrote in our article, these problems “may be better understood in the light of Arendt’s thoughts” (Jansson & Wagman, 2017, p. 10). Examples are the development of sustainable work situations (Lindman, 2015; Wilpert, 2009), the relevance of introducing basic income (Jansson, 2017; Lindman, 2015; Standing, 2005), and the current global situation with refugees having limited access to society and restricted citizenship. Here, Arendt’s ideas about cosmopolitan citizenship may enrich current understandings of this issue (Arendt, 1951/2004; Smith, 2007). Arendt is also very relevant in light of the recognition of human impact (i.e., occupations) on climate (IPCC, 2014). She argued that modern society had turned into a “waste economy”; a consumer society in which “things appear and disappear” in constantly recurring cycles (1958/1998, p. 134).

Taken together, we appreciate Turnbull’s critique and reflections, which have broadened and deepened the insights we offered into Arendt’s thinking. To capture an overall, or primary, aim in Arendt’s writings is not easy. As Jerome Kohn put it in the introduction to The Promise of Politics;

… her train of thought shifts constantly with the perspectives from which she regards whatever she is thinking about – and more often than not its consequence has been that Arendt’s “overall” meaning, which she never even attempts to spell out, is lost. (Kohn, 2005, p. xx)

ORCID

Inger Jansson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3309-2816

Petra Wagman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7964-7143