The human condition

A fundamental work by Hannah Arendt. It explores the nature of the active life and the three essential human activities: labour, work, and action.

Published in 1958, it is one of the major works of Hannah Arendt, a political philosopher of Jewish origin. In this book, Arendt analyses human existence in society, from Ancient Greece to modernity, examining how human activities manifest in different spheres of life.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906. She studied at the Universities of Marburg and Freiburg and earned her doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, where she was a student of Karl Jaspers. She moved to France in 1933. In 1941, she moved to the United States, becoming a US citizen ten years later. She was a visiting professor at several universities, including California, Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago, and a professor at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952 and the Arts and Letters Grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954. Hannah Arendt died in December 1975.