A central argument in The Human Condition is that historically, vita activa has been undervalued in favor of vita contemplativa, which has been considered the only truly virtuous activity.1 Vita activa, then, has been thought of as only a means to vita contemplativa. A prominent defense of this position appears in Chapter 2 of The Human Condition, where Arendt tries to support her argument by going back to Aristotle, where she introduces the terms σχολή and ἀσχολία. She interprets σχολή as “freedom and surcease from political activity.” On the other hand, she interprets ἀσχολία as the negation of σχολή (which indeed is its etymology: ἀ-σχολία), but more importantly, as the activity that corresponds to vita activa: “The term vita activa [...] corresponds more closely to the Greek ἀσχολία.” Having presented these two central terms, she proceeds to the central argument: vita activa has been thought of by philosophers—Aristotle included—as being but a means to vita contemplativa. She claims (that Aristotle believed, as she cites him at the end of this sentence): “[J]ust as war takes place for the sake of peace, thus every kind of activity [i.e., ἀσχολία], even the processes of mere thought, must culminate in the absolute quiet of contemplation [i.e., σχολή].”

I believe that this interpretation of Aristotle by Arendt is a clear case of misinterpretation. More specifically, there are two misinterpretations. First comes her grouping together of “freedom” and “surcease from political activity” under σχολή. But for Aristotle, these two are directly opposite and irreconcilably incompatible. Indicatively, in Politics, 1317β12, he writes (my emphasis): “A man to live as he likes; this is said to be the function of freedom [...] From it, it has come the claim [...] to govern and to be governed in turns.” Since “to govern and to be governed in turns” is a clear case of political activity, for Aristotle it is the political activity, and not its surcease, that is a basic principle of freedom. The second misinterpretation is tied to the central argument, and builds on top of the first one. In summary, for Aristotle, political activity is clearly not seen as just a means to σχολή. Why? Because Aristotle considered σχολή as a precondition to political activity. Again, indicatively in Politics, 1329α.1: “σχολή is needed both for the development of virtue, and for active participation in politics.” Thus, political activity is not a means to σχολή, but rather, it is exactly the other way around! This is then why the central argument cannot be supported by turning to Aristotle; that is, by an appeal-to-authority argument with Aristotle as the authority.2

In her masterpiece The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt contrasts vita activa with vita contemplativa, with the running argument being that historically, philosophers—starting with Aristotle—have valued vita activa significantly less than vita contemplativa, to the point that vita activa is only but a means to vita contemplativa. In this essay, I propose that Aristotle did not actually think that, and that Arendt may have misinterpreted him.

Let’s start with some terminology to know what we are talking about. Vita activa means “active life” and vita contemplativa means “contemplative life.” These terms were not invented by Arendt. She borrows them from Latin scholarship, which itself borrows them from Aristotle. In particular, Aristotle talked about βίος πολιτικός or “political life,” which for some reason got translated to vita activa. I say “for some reason” because it should be obvious that this is far from an accurate translation. Similarly, the term vita contemplativa is a translation of Aristotle’s βίος θεωρητικός, or “theoretical life” (although it makes more sense to think of it as “life spent theorizing”).

Despite their historical origins, when it comes to Arendt’s work, I think it makes more sense to actually completely discard the history of the terms. Why? Because she redefines them! This means that she could have used the terms George and Michael, and they would still not make any less sense. In fact, since—as I will argue later—Arendt may actually be misinterpreting the historical precedent, the latter not only does not help in trying to figure out what Arendt is trying to say, but it may actively hinder any sort of coherence someone is trying to build upon.3 So, for now, I will make no attempt to explain βίος πολιτικός and βίος θεωρητικός. Instead, I will simply explain vita activa and vita contemplativa based on how Arendt defines them.

Vita activa. By vita activa, Arendt designates three human activities: work, labor, and action. Unfortunately, even though Arendt gives us “definitions” right when she introduces them, these definitions are anything but clear or understandable. So, since I believe that it will be of no use to repeat them here, what follows is necessarily an interpretation.

By labor, Arendt means any kind of human activity that is meant to help us subsist and self-preserve. Cutting an apple from the tree because you’re hungry is an example of labor. Same as killing an animal to eat it or trying to find something to cover yourself because it is cold. These examples are of course a bit outdated, but that’s the point: labor, just like the other two, is an activity humans have been doing since their beginnings. Today we could think of labor as making a simple salad to eat for the night or perhaps even making a pseudo-double jacket for the night—because it’s cold—by putting a jacket inside another jacket.

One way to think of labor is that what we do, and especially what we make, is not meant to last; like a salad, a kill, or our pseudo-double jacket. It’s just something that fulfills our basic, immediate needs. Another way to think of labor is that it does not require technique. Of course cutting a salad requires perhaps some technique, but really most random humans can cut a salad or, back in the day, kill an animal.

Work, on the other hand, is where technique comes into play. Work for Arendt is, as far as I can tell, almost identical to what people call technics. If you know what that means exactly, great! Please tell me because I don’t, and I have been trying to figure it out for at least three years. Interestingly, both work and technics seem to be “defined” equally vaguely. But anyway, for this essay, we can think of Arent’s work as any kind of skilled behavior. Also, to contrast it with labor, work is any activity that intends to make artifacts that last. Thus, killing an animal with our own hands or with a random rock is labor. But making a bow and arrow—especially a good pair of these—is work. Today, most of what you see around your house is the result of work, not labor. Sure, your salad is labor, but your monitor, your couch, your bed, your sink; none of that is the result of labor.

Finally, there is action. Action for Arendt is basically any kind of group activity. Killing an animal with your bare hands is labor. Killing it with a bow and an arrow you made is work. But if five men gather up and collaborate to kill it, that’s now action. Perhaps here it is useful to quote Arendt: “Action [...] corresponds to the human condition of plurality.” So, whenever folks do things together, you have action. If we generalize action and we take it to its natural ultimate version, then we have politics. Politics then, for Arendt, is in the realm of action. Thus—and importantly for this essay—politics falls under vita activa.

Vita contemplativa. For Arendt, vita contemplativa is not split into multiple branches. For her, vita contemplativa is “simply” the activity of just thinking. Pure thinking. You go into some quiet space, you close your eyes—in fact you ideally stop moving altogether—and you just think. Hard and deep.

Proving a theorem, coming up with a theory, forming an argument, or studying a text—all that is vita contemplativa for Arendt. In other words, vita contemplativa is anything that involves the mind, only the mind, and only one mind; yours. Put differently, it is fundamentally a self-reflective activity. Comparing vita activa and vita contemplativa, we can see that on the outset, vita activa involves any kind of “mindless” or superficial activity, any activity that does not really involve λόγος.

The central argument. One of the central arguments in this book—and the one we are concerned with here—is that historically, vita activa has been undervalued in favor of vita contemplativa, which has been considered the only truly virtuous activity. More specifically, vita activa, has been thought of as only a means to vita contemplativa, which is the ultimate end, and especially that which philosophers idealized. In other words, vita activa is simply what you “gotta do” to have the time, space, money, etc. to do vita contemplativa.

Σχόλη and Ἀσχολία. In Chapter 2 of The Human Condition, Arendt tries to support her central argument by going back to Aristotle. There, she introduces two more important Greek terms: σχολή, and its negation ἀσχολία (ἀ-σχολία). What is central for this essay is how Arendt interprets these two terms. First, she interprets σχολή as “freedom and surcease from political activity.” On the other hand, she interprets ἀσχολία as corresponding to vita activa. She writes: “The term vita activa [...] corresponds more closely to the Greek ἀσχολία (“unquiet”).” Then she continues to state that σχολή is thought of as the absolute stillness, the absolute quiet, the absolute lack of activity, so that one can get deep into thought.

She now ties this understanding with the central argument: vita activa has been thought of by philosophers—Aristotle included—as being but a means to vita contemplativa. Close to where the terms σχολή and ἀσχολία are introduced, Arendt presents one of the many formulations of this argument, but this one is relevant to our discussion for two reasons. First, because she ends it with a citation to Aristotle showing that to her, this is a relatively accurate interpretation of Aristotle, and second, it uses the concepts of σχολή and ἀσχολία. Thus, she writes: “[J]ust as war takes place for the sake of peace, thus every kind of activity [i.e., ἀσχολία], even the processes of mere thought, must culminate in the absolute quiet of contemplation [i.e., σχόλη].”

In short, I believe that this interpretation of Aristotle by Arendt is a clear case of misinterpretation. More specifically, there are two misinterpretations. First, comes her grouping together of “freedom” and “surcease from political activity” under σχολή. But for Aristotle, these two are literally directly opposite and irreconcilably incompatible. Indicatively, in Politics, 1317b12, he writes (my emphasis): “A man to live as he likes; this is said to be the function of freedom [...] From it, it has come the claim [...] to govern and to be governed in turns.” Since “to govern and to be governed in turns” is a clear case of political activity, for Aristotle it is the political activity, and not its surcease, that is a basic principle of freedom.

The second misinterpretation is not independent, but rather builds on top of the first, and this one has to do with the central argument. So, for Aristotle, political activity is clearly not seen as inferior to σχολή. Why? Because Aristotle considered σχόλη as a precondition to political activity. Again, indicatively in Politics, 1329a.1: “σχολή is needed both for the development of virtue, and for active participation in politics.” Thus, political activity is not but a means to σχόλη. Rather, it is actually exactly the other way around! It is σχόλη which is the means to political activity! This is then why the central argument cannot hold when interpreting Aristotle.

There are many ways we may want to salvage Arendt’s argument, and I believe we should at least try, because I think Arendt has a point. I think Arendt had her finger on something quite important. So, let’s see what we can do.

First of all, I think that Arendt can make her central argument without going to Aristotle. Assuming that Arendt cares about the influences of medieval thinking, then Aristotle is not just someone who’s nice to have on your side; he’s the absolute authority. In other words, it seems to me that what Arendt tried to do here was something like this: “I believe that X opinion was strong in medieval thinking. One way to give evidence that my belief is reasonable is to simply show that Aristotle believed X. Because then it ‘naturally follows’ that medievals thought that, since Aristotle was the absolute authority.”

And sure, generally speaking if you can do that, in a way you can save yourself a lot of the historical work that is needed to find evidence that some belief X was strong during medieval thinking. Because normally you’d need to cite many thinkers across many years and so that X was something all of them more or less believed. But if you show Aristotle believed X, then you don’t need any of that. It’s an elegant and efficient solution, but in this case unfortunately it doesn’t work, for the reasons I outlined above.

Now, more generally, does that mean that the central argument has never been true? No. In fact, I think the central argument holds for the medieval period, and actually before and after it. And a very big reason it can totally hold is that Aristotle is one of the most misinterpreted philosophers in history. As Walter Lippmann said, Marxism is not what Marx wrote or meant. It is what those who read him understood. That’s of course debatable, but the point is that when we’re talking about influence, then of course what matters is what people understood and not what someone wrote. Aristotle is still being misinterpreted grossly even by professional philosophers. For instance, in the Philosophy Department of UIUC, I regularly hear some professors say “remember Plato and Aristotle, and their support for the philosopher-kings.” But Aristotle never supported the philosopher king! And anyway, it’s an abomination to talk about Plato and Aristotle as if they “more or less” had similar opinions. They were worlds apart. Plato supported an aristocracy while Aristotle supported a democracy. But again, the point is that if professional philosophers today—at a period in which we think these things are basically sorted out—make such statements publicly and without caring much, then of course it’s more than plausible that medieval thinkers grossly misinterpreted Aristotle. In fact, if anything, it is more likely that we’re misinterpreting Aristotle today rather than in the medieval period. This may sound counterintuitive because knowledge is supposed to generally improve over time, but in reality this is mostly true about STEM. In Humanities things are wilder, and one of the main problems when it comes to interpretations is that Modernity thinks itself as the most superior period ever. That was not true for the medieval period to the best of my knowledge. So, it was probably much more likely for them to interpret Aristotle correctly than us—even though their means were way more meager—simply because of their disposition; that is, their humility.

Finally, I think it is worth talking a bit about what I think Arendt got right. I think Arendt got totally right that what she calls labor and work—especially work—have been historically undervalued by most philosophers, and that includes Aristotle. After all, she was not the first nor the last to argue that. All the scholarship around technics is essentially centered around that. For instance, the same argument is made in La technique et le temps (Technics and Time) by Bernard Stiegler, in which he argues that technics, or what Arendt would call work, is actually constitutive of the human condition (and I think Arendt would be totally onboard).

What does not work is using the general category of vita activa simply because one has to separate out what she calls action. Action—or well, politics—has definitely not been undervalued, especially by Aristotle. As we said, Aristotle valued it so dearly that σχολή—what Arendt correctly interprets as being considered one of the most noblest and nicest of the human activities—is considered not an end, but a means when it is compared to action, which is what is considered the end. With this separation, I think The Human Condition makes a very prescient point that is more relevant than ever today.

1. As Arendt says: “The term [vita activa] in medieval philosophy [is] the standard translation of the Aristotelian bios politikos.” Indeed, but it is inaccurate. “Vita activa” means “active life,” whereas “βίος πολιτικός” means “political life.”↩
2. Since this is an appeal-to-authority argument, it is important to note that Arendt indeed gives ample citations that support her interpretation of Aristotle’s understanding of σχολή as “quiet thought” and ἀσχολία as “unquiet,” the contrast he introduces between these two terms, and his belief that ἀσχολία is only a means to σχολή. However, there is no citation anywhere in the book that backs either of the following two claims: (i) that Aristotle believed that political activity was somehow inferior to σχολή or just a means to it, and (ii) that Aristotle included what Arendt calls “action” into his conception of ἀσχολία. Furthermore, she does not cite and/or engage with any of the seminal philosophical works around the concept of σχολή. In her defense, a lot of the great scholarship around this concept was written much later than this publication (and much of it is in French). But then again, Muße und Kult, which is one of the foundational works on the subject, was published in 1947 in German. That was more than ten years before this book and she does not cite it anywhere.↩
3. By the way, since the Latin terms have their origins in Greek, and the Latin translations are clearly bad, I am not sure why she chose not to use the Greek terms. I will offer a guess though. Throughout the book, Arendt seems to be interested in how these terms have been understood throughout time and how a single philosopher meant them or defined them. She still cites, and in my opinion, misinterprets specific philosophers—like Aristotle—which is why this essay exists. But if we look at it more generally, I think the point she is trying to make is at its essence historical and covering a wide span of historic time. In other words, I think she’s trying to say “here’s how people have thought about them over the past couple hundred years.” In that view, I think she is interested more in how these notions were understood in the medieval times rather than in Aristotle’s time. For instance, she writes: “And this is precisely what separates the vita contemplativa from the vita activa in medieval thought.” Nevertheless, it’s very hard to tell exactly what she is going for. For instance, some philosophers (e.g., Sotiris Amarantos) have interpreted Arendt as though she’s using Ancient Greece as her ideal model, and obviously under that interpretation, the context of Ancient Greece must have mattered tremendously to her. But no matter which road she wanted to go—if she wanted to go on either—regarding that topic, I still think that the main source of confusion is that, on the one hand, she chooses to use two already existing terms, and on the other, she chooses to also redefine them completely. This seems to be part of the counterargument she proposes; something like “here’s how people have valued these two, but here’s how I think we should value them.” But I believe it would be cleaner if just introduced her own terms. Something like “here’s what I will talk about—I name them A and B, here’s how those have been valued, and here’s why I disagree.” In such a formulation, the scholarship around the two vitae could be used as evidence of her historical interpretation, but without introducing the unavoidable confusion arising from her different use of these terms.↩