Action, Story and History: On Re-reading The Human Condition

Author(s): PAUL RICOEUR

Source: Salmagundi , Spring-Summer 1983, No. 60, On Hannah Arendt (Spring-Summer
1983), pp. 60-72
Published by: Skidmore College

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40547752

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Action, Story and History:
On Re-reading The Human Condition*
BY PAUL RICOEUR

The distinction between labor, work and action - which is the

cornerstone of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition (1958) - has
usually been examined and criticized via the disciplines of sociology
and political science. Questions have been raised as to the accuracy and
coherence of her criteria, and above all, as to whether or not they were
consistent with the principal presuppositions of her other major works,
namely The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and On Revolution (1963).
I should like to undertake an examination of the central concepts from
a different point of view, one closer to philosophical anthropology than
to political science. For this purpose I have chosen as a leading thread
the connection between action, story and history which appears in the
section of The Human Condition devoted to action and which is
expanded in "The Modern Concept of History" (1958), reprinted in
Between Past and Future (1961). By philosophical anthropology I mean
an inquiry aimed at identifying the most enduring features of the
temporal condition of man - those which are the least vulnerable to
the vicissitudes of the modern age.
I am aware of the danger of an analysis which stresses what is basic
to The Human Condition rather than the critique of modernity which
is usually considered to be Hannah Arendt's main contribution to
modern thought. But the very composition of The Human Condition
warrants this kind of approach. In spite of her repeated incursions into
the problem of modernity in her five first chapters, she felt compelled
to devote a sixth distinct chapter to "The Vita Activa and the Modern
Age" (pp. 248 ff.). The distinction between Vita Contemplativa and
♦Unless otherwise indicated, quotations in this text are taken from Hannah Arendt, The
Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

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Action, Story and History 61
the Vita Activa is the undeveloped presupp
to govern the whole of the analysis fr
distinction between "The Public and th
introduced before the three main categ
ordering of these three categories of la
categories are not categories in the Ka
structures of the mind. They are them
Nevertheless, throughout their manifold p
of flexible identity which allows us to r
of the human condition which deserve to be described under such
names. If this were not the case, the ceaseless references to Homer,
Plato, Aristotle, the Romans and the Medieval thinkers would amount
to, at best, a kind of nostalgia, and at worst, to the repetition of
unjustified anachronisms. The claim underlying such borrowings is that
modernity itself, in spite of its pretension to radical newness, can still
be understood with the help of such concepts aspoiesis, praxis, animal
laborans, homo f aber, vita activa, and so on. It is precisely in order
to vindicate the strategy of the author, combining ancient categories
with novel situations, that I deliberately choose to disentangle the
temporal traits characteristic of the categories of labor, work and action
from the more controversial and polemical assessment of the state of
modern man. This preliminary analysis will introduce my main topic,
namely the transition from action to story and from story to history.
What will interest me in this second stage of my inquiry is less the
contribution of Hannah Arendt to the epistemology of historiography
than the amplification of the description of human time implicit in the
first stage of our inquiry devoted to the temporal features of labor,
work and action.

/. The Temporal Features of Labor, Work and Action

It's worth our while to underscore the permanent features of these

three categories in order to understand not only the radical
transformation they undergo but also the book's polemical stance
concerning their modern reordering. The crucial issue is: how could
the author question on the one hand the underestimation of the vita
practica in the platonic and neoplatonic tradition and in the early and
medieval stages of Christianity for the sake of vita contemplativa, and
on the other hand, the overestimation of the category of labor after
Adam Smith and Marx, if the hierarchy and balance between vita

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62 PAUL RICOEUR

contemplativa and vit

normative value, ru
My contention is th
be vindicated in the
consideration are dea
raised by the tempora
with the definition o
and to the care for in
of work as the fabric
the definition of acti
will be to disentangl
each of these stages
have to do with man
rather time is raised
knows that it is "mo
is eternal. Hannah Ar
which is both presocr
but that it is as "m
contemplativa which a
upon its own tempo
condition and the t
presupposition of th
of them are, in their
perishing things. In t
immortality is fund
Condition . Eternity
that we think, we th
to think eternity.) I
ourselves in order t
enterprise, in this r
ourselves. From this a
of the whole human e

1 This claim is asserted in

activa "are fundamental b
which life on earth has b
2 This point is nowhere e
Hannah Arendt's unfinis
and edited by Mary McC
is acknowledged by the au
to "The Work of Hannah
World (1972), ed. Melvy

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 Action, Story and History 63

political status of man without being h

by accident and by necessity), consiste
greatness in spite of its vanity - or to con
of its greatness. This unequivocal equivoci
between vita contemplativa and vita act
Let us now proceed stage by stage.
The activity called labor draws its tem
the transitory nature of things produce
Labor remains today an activity submit
the ceaseless renewal of life. This is wh
all those "good things" which are "reall
to the "necessity of subsisting," are "gene
as - if they are not consumed by use -
themselves." Hannah Arendt agrees: "t
things are those needed for the life process itself." Absence of
durability, accordingly, characterizes the level of animal labor ans. This
apparent paradox must be correctly understood in order to make sense
of the vehement attack directed against modern reductions of work to
labor. Work, as we shall see, constitutes the realm of durability for
reasons we shall spell out later. The characterization of labor as that
which lacks durability looks paradoxical when we consider the
accumulation of tools and instruments, the constitution of capital, and
the abundance of commodities and goods in advanced industrial
societies - at least as long as the problem of the exhaustion of non-
renewable energies and resources has not emerged as a crucial
predicament for the whole economic community. For Hannah Arendt
all these achievements resulting from the liberation of labor, which itself
preceeds the political liberation of laborers, tend to conceal the
inescapable fact that life has to be unceasingly entertained and renewed,
and that labor exhausts itself in the reproduction of a perpetually dying
life, as Marx clearly explained in The German Ideology. Therefore, we
should not let ourselves be deceived by the phenomenon of accumulation
proper to modern production, but keep as a guideline throughout our
analyses the ceaseless destruction of goods linked to consumption. It
is the consumability of the products of labor which gives them their
transient nature. Under this condition, it is no paradox to say that "it
is ... the mark of all laboring that it leaves nothing behind." To
consume is to exhaust. Labor, accordingly, underscores and reinforces
the devouring character of life itself. But, if deceived by the
accumulation of capital and the abundance of the products of labor,

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64 PAUL RICOEUR

we project upon labo

characteristic of work,
ephemeral in the orig
devouring consumption.
products of work for th
Hannah Arendt's majo
work into laboring,"
be consumed. The pro
between consumption
It concerns the differ
change and duration.
The analysis of labor
work. The principal as
is durability. Durability
i.e. objects used but not
although man-made, con
the matrix of mortal lif
objects which resist th
home erected on earth a
delivers into human h
but of things that are u
durable thanks to abund
if dealt with as product
goods and brought back
in the midst of things
erecting a world whos
life, this life would n
futility of a life which
subject which endures
Condition, p. 135).
A new paradox arises h
to use, but it is inheren
houses, temples, paintin
labor produces, preserve
existence relies on the
texts - it is through th
works are made durab
if we look more carefu
but of consumption and

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Action, Story and History 65

to labor and work products. The functio

Hannah Arendt, is "to offer mortals a dw
and more stable than themselves." We
Heidegger's analysis of the act of dwelli
the line between consuming and using: "T
the human artifice erected by homofaber
man, whose stability will endure and
movement of their lives and actions, on
both the sheer functionalism of things pr
the sheer utility of objects produced f
quotation, is brought back to the side o
to the utilitarian tradition of our culture
to cancel the distinction between use and
this distinction is preserved that mort
meaning: to be born is to gain access to
of merely to come into the midst of the
and to die is to recede, to pass out of
humanized world that man is born and di
span of time between birth and death
no longer Zõê. Life, then, is full of eve
told as a story, establish a biography."
This last remark already anticipates th
close link, thanks to speech, with "a sto
be told." Actually, the transition betwe
by the notion of remembrance, considere
Works as such are the documents and the
witness to the difference between time a
If we keep in mind this polarity betw
regardless of the social or cultural cha
differences between work and labor, th
remains the mark of labor and the refere
of work.
We move now to the category of action. Its major criterion, according
to Hannah Arendt, is the disclosure of who. Action, connected with
speech, reveals man as an agent, i.e. the one who begins and rules (the
Greek term ark hei n meaning both), the one who initiates changes in
the world. A first emphasis falls on the who, i.e., the responsible subject.
But Hannah Arendt is too Aristotelian to get trapped in an individualism
or a subjectivism which would make her turn her back on political

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 66 PAUL RICOEUR

philosophy. Inter hom

animal. That is why a
will bring forth som
who implies that man
notion of a space of a
in turn the constitut
realm. This notion is
The Human Conditio
before those of labor
when the explicatio
consideration of "th
human life displays hi
realm, space of appe
of who. Altogether t
If we read backward
that the very distinct
distinction between
action. In spite of Ma
to the oikia, i.e. the h
The genuine "commo
ultimately, remain
overestimation of th
political one amounts
consequently to aboli
private realm, private
the "who" which action discloses is the citizen as distinct from the
laborer and even from the fabricator of man-made artifacts. When
politics is absorbed by social engineering, man, the bearer of action,
man, the citizen, is absorbed by the laborer-consumer.
Once more, the polemical stance of The Human Condition has to
be brought back to the underlying philosophical anthropology. And
once more it is to the temporal constitution of the hierarchy of activities
that we are directed by this philosophical anthropology. But, strangely
enough, we have not yet spoken of time but only of space. All the
previous expressions: public realm, space of appearance, web of human
relationships, and even disclosure, have a prevailing spatial
connotation.3 It is at that point that we must introduce the connection
3 "The disclosure of who" requires "the shining brightness we once called glory and
which is possible only in the public realm." (p. 180)

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 Action, Story and History 67

between action and story, which is the

inquiry.4

II

The connection between action and story is one of the most striking
themes of the whole treatise on The Human Condition. This link is
a very subtle one. Hannah Arendt does not want to say that any life-
span constitutes a story as such, nor even that the disclosure of the who
is by itself a story. It is only jointly that the disclosure of the who and
the web of human relationships engenders a process from which the
unique life story of any newcomer may emerge. Why link in this way
the disclosure of the who and the web of human relationships? In order
to give an account of the opaqueness of any life-story for its "hero."
The life-story proceeds as a compromise from the encounter between
the events initiated by man as the agent of action and the interplay of
circumstances induced by the web of human relationships. The result
is a story in which everyone is the hero without being the author:
"nobody is the author or the producer of his own life-story. In other
words, the stories, the results of action and speech, reveal an agent,
but this agent is not an author or producer. Somebody began it and
is its subject in the twofold sense of the word, namely, its actor and
sufferer, but nobody is its author." Hannah Arendt repeatedly asserts:
story and history are only the "outcome of action," but "the hero of
the story, we never can point unequivocally to him as the author of
its eventual outcome."
These remarks remain obscure as long as one does not acknowledge
the new temporal dimensions introduced by political action. After the
futility of life and the durability of the man-made world, we have to
consider the "frailty of human affairs." This turn may look puzzling,
if not baffling. After the plea for the durability of work over against
the evanescent character of the objects of consumption, this way of
underscoring the frailty of human affairs looks like a step backward
in the whole argument of the book. Let us take a closer look at this
concept of frailty. It does not bring us back to the futility of life, but

4 Actually, the concept of story has already been anticipated in relation to the power
of remembrance belonging to works, notably works of art. It could not be otherwise,
since story (and history) are works of discourse. As speech, they belong to the third
level, a level defined by action-and-speech. As works they belong to the world of
durability. It's this durability which will receive a new meaning in connection with
"the frailty of human affairs." See below.

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 68 PAUL RICOEUR

takes us beyond the d

as such. How?
First, whereas work leaves behind monuments and documents whose
totality constitute the permanence of the world, action in common exists
only as long as the actors sustain it. More precisely, the public realm
is kept coherent thanks to power. And power, as the word suggests,
remains always potential, in contrast with strength which endures.
Power exists when people act together; it vanishes when they disperse.
(Hence the strong temptation to substitute violence for power.) Power
is the paradigm of an activity which leaves no work behind and exhausts
its meaning in its own exercise.
Furthermore, action cannot escape the condition of "plurality." That
means that for each agent the outcome of an action seldom coincides
with its original intention. This constraint expresses the dépendance of
individual activity on the web of human relationships. It implies that
some make an action, others undergo it. Men are both actors and
sufferers.
This "frailty" of human affairs is reflected in the activity of
storytelling. Only when action is over can it be told: "action reveals
itself fully only to the storyteller, that is, to the backward glance of
the historian." This reaffirms Arendt's assertion that "although history
owes its existence to men, it is still obviously not 'made' by them."
But we should be unable to understand why and how story and history
could be "made" by the storyteller and the historian without merely
lying, if we did not coordinate the activity of storytelling and history
writing with the main function of political activity, namely confronting
the challenge of the frailty of human affairs: "The original, philosophic
Greek remedy for the frailty had been the foundation of the polis."
Nothing allows us to suppose that such is no longer the case today.
The causes of frailty are so deeply rooted that the function of politics
outlives the fate of the polis. I think that I interpret Hannah Arendt's
thought correctly if I say that the connection established in The Human
Condition between the frailty of human affairs and the political
enterprise provides not only a guideline for understanding the péripéties
of modern politics but a normative principle by which to judge the
eclipse of politics as the supreme expression of free action and to
condemn all the attempts to dissolve politics into human engineering.
We should say that the political constitution of the State is to the frailty
of human affairs what the durability of work is to the perishable nature
of the products of labor. In this sense, politics expresses man's ultimate
attempt to "immortalize" himself or herself.

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Action, Story and History 69
We may now return to the activity of storytell
They must be understood in terms of th
immortalization. We have learned this lesson in
Thucydides. The permanence of human great
poets. But this is possible because the city is alr
remembrance." What the poet does is compo
creative imitation of action understood in t
dimension.
In her 1958 essay 'The Modern Concept of History" (The Review
of Politics, 1958, pp. 570-590), reprinted in Between Past and Future
under the title "The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern,"5
Hannah Arendt starts once more from the Greek definition of history
as an attempt "to save human deeds from the futility that comes from
oblivion." It is true that in this essay, the author is more mindful of
the difference between ancient and modern history which results from
the reversal of the relation between nature and history. Whereas the
tacit assumption of Greek historiography is "the distinction between
the mortality of men and the immortality of nature, between man-made
things and things which come into being by themselves," with the advent
of Platonism and Christianity it is man who is seen as immortal and
nature perishable. This reversal accounts for the fact that history lacked
real philosophical significance in Western thought until Vico. But
modern man's lack of interest in personal immortality, his reverence
for the iron laws of nature and the increasing recognition that history
is "made" by men just as nature is "made" by God, according to Vico's
motto, has brought us back to the Greek assessment of the task of
history. It is no longer the futility of mortal life which calls for the
remedy of remembrance, but the futility of action itself. "The Concept
of History" confirms The Human Condition on this point: "Action
[in contrast with fabrication], as the Greeks were the first to discover,
is in and by itself utterly futile; it never leaves an end product behind
itself."
Nevertheless, this analysis does not prevent Hannah Arendt from
acknowledging that there is a modern concept of history. This concept
is based on the belief in the process-character pervading both history
and nature. "Certainly nothing more sharply distinguishes the modern
concept of history from that of antiquity." This concept of process
is as far from Christian eschatology as it is from the Roman conception
of history as a storehouse of examples and from the Greek concept of
5 See also: "History and Immortality," Partisan Review, Winter 1957, pp. 11-53.

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 70 PAUL RICOEUR

remembrance of the
immortality of ma
in Hegel's philosoph
But, precisely beca
realm - thanks to the rise of the secular state of modern man -
politics regains "that grave and decisive relevance for the existence of
men which it has lacked since antiquity because it was irreconcilable
with a strictly Christian understanding of the secular." Once more the
drive toward immortality lies at the foundation of political communities.
In this way, Hannah Arendt seems more interested in the rediscovery
of antiquity through the process of secularization than in the novelty
of the modern concept of history. Of course, "the immortalizing process
may become independent of cities, states and nations; it encompasses
the whole of mankind, whose history Hegel was consequently able to
see as one uninterrupted development of the Spirit." But "politically
speaking, within the secular realm itself secularization meant nothing
more or less than that men once more had become mortals."
The reader may wonder, nevertheless, whether the "earthly
immortality" of the secular realm, in modern terms, still leaves room
for the kind of meditation on the frailty of human affairs proposed
in The Human Condition, Has the secular realm extended more stability
to the whole of mankind than the Greek polis1} Does not the very
concept of process express a subtle obliviousness to the frailty of human
affairs? Is not Marx's notion of "making history" the sheer denial of
what was said about history, namely that we do not "make it," rather,
we comprehend it only through the backward glance of the storyteller
and the historian?
Here we reach the point where Arendt must declare her anti-modern
stance. The very concept of "making history" marks the regression
of acting to making. In the modern historical consciousness "we can
easily detect the age-old attempt to escape from the frustrations and
fragilities of human action by construing it in the image of making."
This is why the essay devoted to "The Modern Concept of History"
is both an overt recognition of the inescapable originality of the modern
age and a covert denial of its main claim, that is, earthly immortality.
The failure of this claim is the secret of "the growing meaninglessness
of the modern world" which the essay underscores in its last pages.
The reason for this failure is the shattering of the illusion that history
can be made. "Only patterns can be 'made,' whereas meanings cannot
be, but, like truth, will only disclose or reveal themselves."

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Action, Story and History 71

What Hannah Arendt ultimately repud

contemplative philosophy of history, with
for a political philosophy, which remains
activa. Nothing among the achievements
her that the hierarchy within the vita ac
of the statesman occupies the highest
craftsman and artist an intermediary, and
the necessities for the functioning of
lowest" - that this hierarchy could be r
damages.
The detour through the essay "The Modern Concept of History"
may perhaps cast some light on the puzzling pages which conclude the
chapter on "Action" in The Human Condition. Taught by the
frightening transformation of political philosophy when it is submitted
to the claim of making history as a whole, we may return to the very
concept of immortality through politics. To what extent does Hannah
Arendt assume this concept, even under the condition of a more modest
concept of politics?
The answer to this question is difficult and dubious. The reason for
our hesitation resides in the ambiguity of the writer's position in trying
to understand the vita activa from the point of view of the vita
contemplativa, without explaining what she means by vita
contemplativa, except that it is thought, not knowledge. This ambiguous
position allows her both to write an apology for politics over against
its reduction to social and economic activities, and to resist all the
illusions linked to the attempt of mortals to "immortalize" themselves.
Here the Nietzschean side of the thinker balances her Aristotelian side.
This explains the strange way in which the section on action is closed.
Stress is laid not only on the frailty of human affairs but on the
weaknesses of the remedies themselves. These weaknesses are
summarized in two words: irreversibility and unpredictability. Needless
to say, these terms put the last touch on the underlying philosophy of
time. On the one hand, what has been done cannot be undone. On the
other hand, what follows cannot be forecast. Now, what defense can
we muster against these ultimate weaknesses of human time when /
has withstood the challenge of political action? To irreversibility, th
only answer is the power to forgive', to unpredictability, the power of
promise. Forgiveness unties what is tied; promise binds what is
uncertain. There are, of course, political applications to promise (pacta
sunt servando: treaties are inviolable); it is doubtful that there is room

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 72 PAUL RICOEUR

for forgiveness in politics. We have obviously reached - if not

trespassed - a threshold, the one which connects the vita activa to the
vita contemplativa. This trespassing may explain the perplexity of
readers confronted with this final declaration: 'The miracle that saves
the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, 'material' ruin
is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is
ontologically rooted." And the last lines: "It is this faith in and hope
for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct
expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their
'glad tidings': 'A child has been born unto us' ." Period.
We will be less puzzled by this unexpected ending if we locate it on
the trajectory of the temporal experience underlying Hannah Arendt's
philosophical anthropology. This trajectory starts with the deathless
repetition of the natural world, goes through the futility of laboring
and the durability of cultural works, and finally reaches a frailty more
formidable than any futility. This acknowledgment of the frailty of a
history that we don't "make," and which undermines all the works
that we "make," sounds like an ultimate memento mori. Our mortality
is, so to speak, reasserted at the end of our travel. What, then, remains
to the thinker - not to the political animal - in front of death? The
exaltation of birth, of a new beginning. Only natality - perhaps -
escapes the illusion of immortality on the part of mortals who think
eternity.

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