On Arendt’s "Vita Activa"

Hannah Arendt(1906–1975),Jewish German-American philosopher,was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century.She,Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Sontag were called the three centers of Western woman’s Scholarship.She was born into a German-Jewish family,then went to university after having completed her high school studies.She followed Martin Heidegger and Jaspers to study philosophy,theology and ancient Greek.The encounter with Heidegger in Marburg University,with whom she had a brief but intense love-affair,had a lasting influence on her thought.She went to Heidelberg University to study with Karl Jaspers,a philosopher with whom she established a long-lasting intellectual and personal friendship.During that time,she completed her doctoral dissertation entitled Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin.As the student of Heidegger and Jaspers,Arendt accepted Existentialism and Phenomenology,which were the most advanced ideas of German philosophy in the early twentieth century.To escape the Nazi persecution during World War II,she was forced to flee Germany,removed France,and eventually settled in the United States.Arendt devoted her life to enlightening the human condition,and she has a large number of highly original insights into Totalitarianism,the banality of evil and the public realm,which provide a new perspective for people to understand the nature of vita activa."Vita Activa" is the key to solve all the mystery of her thoughts,while "the public realm" is the knot to weaving her political wisdom network.Reviewing the broken twentieth Century with The coexistence of light and dark and the symbiosis between brilliant and fallen,Arendt faced the political crisis of the twentieth Century and the dark ages of the moral collapse.She illuminated our reality by tracing the political experience of the Polis and endowed act with the idea of summum bonum through making the internal structure of vita activa clear.She eulogizes the well-being of devotion to the public realm through action.She overcomes the banality of evil by thinking.She tried to bridge the gap between action and contemplation,and dispel the tension between politics and Philosophy.In the face of the public realm suffered annihilation karma and vita activa had the hue alienation,She tried to awaken people’s sense of responsibility,and to guide people to enlighten their conscience with thought.She stressed that plurality was the original form of life existence and believed that freedom of action would illuminate the light of wisdom.Waking up the freedom of action,the public realm will be forever;Reshaping the vita activa,people’s limited life will eventually get the secular immortality.Arendt’s thoughts are still inspiring to commendable or doubting thoughts.If Kant wasconsidered as the water reservoir,with the former philosopher masters’ thoughts convergent,and the descendants’ thoughts flowing out,then Arendt can be considered as a political fortress,to fight against modernity human barbaric and guard the glory of humans’ freedom.Vita Activa is the main theme of this paper and was carried out specific statement in five chapters.Firstly,trace back the concept of "vita activa" in classic and modern theory origin to reappear the forming history of Arendt’s thoughts by reading and criticizing the classic thinkers and it’s agreement and disagreement with modern thinkers.Secondly,explain the deep meaning of "vita activa" and review the history of the term "vita activa",phenomenological analysis it and divide it into three fundamental human activities which is labor,work and action.Third,analyze the manifestation of "vita activa" modern alienation-the loss of the world and the logical subversion,including the rise of the social,the victory of the animal laborans and the invasion and subversion of working logic to politic and culture.Forth,the writer is trying to rebuild the "vita activa" from by two aspects which are "thinking enlightenment conscience" and "demarcation of risk aversion" combined with Arendt’s version thoughts and experience and reality.Fifth,simple analyze and comment "vita activa" and try to carry out the theory to interpret Chinese social reality,aiming to find a contemporary Chinese medicine to solve out this dilemma,and shine the "vita activa" glory to country wisdom and social steady.