The vita activa comprises three fundamental human activities—labor, work, and action—each correspond… — Hannah Arendt

The vita activa comprises three fundamental human activities—labor, work, and action—each corresponding to a basic condition of human existence.

By Hannah Arendt, from The Human Condition

Key Arguments

Arendt explicitly designates a tripartite structure and ties each activity to a distinct condition of life on earth.
Labor corresponds to biological necessity and the life process; work corresponds to worldliness and the durable artificial world; action corresponds to plurality and direct interhuman relations.
These activities are fundamental because they align with the “basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man.”

Source Quotes

With the term , I propose to designate three fundamental human activities: labor, work, and action. They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man.

With the term , I propose to designate three fundamental human activities: labor, work, and action. They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man. Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor.

They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man. Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor. The human condition of labor is life itself.

Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species’ ever-recurring life cycle. Work provides an “artificial” world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings. Within its borders each individual life is housed, while this world itself is meant to outlast and transcend them all.

The human condition of work is worldliness. Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically condition—not only the , but the —of all political life.

Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor. The human condition of labor is life itself. Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species’ ever-recurring life cycle.

Within its borders each individual life is housed, while this world itself is meant to outlast and transcend them all. The human condition of work is worldliness. Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

Key Concepts

I propose to designate three fundamental human activities: labor, work, and action.
They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man.
Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body
Work provides an “artificial” world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings.
Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter
The human condition of labor is life itself.
The human condition of work is worldliness.
corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

Context

I Vita Activa AND THE HUMAN CONDITION (lines 435–507): Programmatic definitions of labor, work, and action and their corresponding conditions.