Hannah Arendt’s vita activa : A valuable contribution to occupational science

Journal of Occupational Science 24 (3):290-301 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Occupational science is undergoing dynamic development and claims have been articulated that human occupation must be understood from multiple ontological standpoints. Hannah Arendt is known for her work The Human Condition in which she explored human occupation from a philosophical and political standpoint. She distinguished the modalities labor, work and action, and labelled them vita activa. The aim of this paper is to present Arendt and her vita activa, in order to provide examples of its relevance for occupational science, showing how vita activa can assist occupational scientists to take a deeper perspective on human occupation. According to Arendt, human occupation is always conditioned. The condition for labor is necessity, which reflects human biological needs and represents the basics of life. The condition for work is utility, as something persistent and durable is produced. Action is the activity that takes place between people without the intermediary of things. Similar to occupational science, vita activa is concerned with human doing but their origins differ. Arendt also emphasized the public sphere as an arena for human occupation, a viewpoint that is shared with recent occupational science literature. The need to expand the scope of occupational science to encompass all aspects of human occupations, including the deleterious, has been expressed and vita activa can contribute to broadening this perspective. Examples of the need for sustainability in working life are also presented in this paper.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

On the significance of Hannah Arendt's the human condition for sociology.Kurt H. Wolff - 1961 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 4 (1-4):67 – 106.
Political inaction as a community of knowledge: a reading of Filon’s The contemplative life.Emmanuel Taub - 2017 - Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (10):215-239.
Vita activa.Hannah Arendtová - 2000 - Filosoficky Casopis 48 (1):51-56.
World and Earth: Hannah Arendt and the Human Relationship to Nature.Paul Ott - 2009 - Ethics, Place and Environment 12 (1):1-16.
Nietzsche and/or Arendt?Vasti Roodt - 2008 - In H. Siemens & V. Roodt (ed.), Nietzsche, Power and Politics. De Gruyter. pp. 373-391.
The archimedean point and eccentricity: Hannah Arendt's philosophy of science and technology.Pieter Tijmes - 1992 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 35 (3-4):389 – 406.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-02-04

Downloads
18 (#708,380)

6 months
2 (#658,980)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The life of the mind.Hannah Arendt - 1978 - New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
The Life of the Mind.[author unknown] - 1980 - Human Studies 3 (3):302-308.

View all 18 references / Add more references