self, in so far as he was and remained an earth-bound creature.
This close relationship of the modern mentality with philosophical
reflection naturally implies that the victory ofhomofaber could not
remain restricted to the employment of new methods in the natural
sciences, the experiment and the mathematization of scientific in-
quiry. One of the most plausible consequences to be drawn from
Cartesian doubt was to abandon the attempt to understand nature
and generally to know about things not produced by man, and to
turn instead exclusively to things that owed their existence to man.
This kind of argument, in fact, made Vico turn his attention from
natural science to history, which he thought to be the only sphere
where man could obtain certain knowledge, precisely because he
dealt here only with the products of human activity.62 The modern
discovery of history and historical consciousness owed one of its
greatest impulses neither to a new enthusiasm for the greatness of
man, his doings and sufferings, nor to the belief that the meaning of
human existence can be found in the story of mankind, but to the
62. Vico (pp. cit., ch. 4) states explicitly why he turned away from natural science. True knowledge of nature is impossible, because not man but God made
it; God can know nature with the same certainty man knows geometry: Geometri-
ca demonstramus quiafacimus; siphyska demonstrare possemus, faceremus ("We can prove geometry because we make it; to prove the physical we would have to
make it")- This little treatise, written more than fifteen years before the first edition of the Scienza Nuova (1725), is interesting in more than one respect. Vico criticizes all existing sciences, but not yet for the sake of his new science of history; what he recommends is the study of moral and political science, which he
finds unduly neglected. It must have been much later that the idea occurred to
him that history is made by man as nature is made by God. This biographical
development, though quite extraordinary in the early eighteenth century, became
the rule approximately one hundred years later: each time the modern age had
reason to hope for a new political philosophy, it received a philosophy of history
instead.
[ 298 ]
The Vita Activa and the Modern Age
despair of human reason, which seemed adequate only when con-
fronted with man-made objects.
Prior to the modern discovery of history but closely connected
with it in its impulses are the seventeenth-century attempts to
formulate new political philosophies or, rather, to invent the means
and instruments with which to "make an artificial animal . . .
called a Commonwealth, or State."63 With Hobbes as with Des-
cartes "the prime mover was doubt,"64 and the chosen method to
establish the "art of man," by which he would make and rule his
own world as "God hath made and governs the world" by the art
of nature, is also introspection, "to read in himself," since this
reading will show him "the similitude of the thoughts and passions
of one man to the thoughts and passions of another." Here, too, the
rules and standards by which to build and judge this most human of
human "works of art"65 do not lie outside of men, are not some-
thing men have in common in a worldly reality perceived by the
senses or by the mind. They are, rather, inclosed in the inwardness
of man, open only to introspection, so that their very validity rests
on the assumption that "not . . . the objects of the passions" but
the passions themselves are the same in every specimen of the spe-
cies man-kind Here again we find the image of the watch, this
time applied to the human body and then used for the movements
of the passions. The establishment of the Commonwealth, the
human creation of "an artificial man," amounts to the building of
an "automaton [an engine] that moves [itself] by springs and
wheels as doth a watch."
In other words, the process which, as we saw, invaded the natu-
ral sciences through the experiment, through the attempt to imitate
under artificial conditions the process of "making" by which a
natural thing came into existence, serves as well or even better as
the principle for doing in the realm of human affairs. For here the
processes of inner life, found in the passions through introspection,
can become the standards and rules for the creation of the "auto-
63. Hobbes's Introduction to the Leviathan.
64. See Michael Oakeshott's excellent Introduction to the Leviathan (Black-
well's Political Texts), p. xiv.
65. Ibid., p. lxiv.
[ 299 ]
The Human Condition
made" life of that "artificial man" who is "the great Leviathan."
The results yielded by introspection, the only method likely to
deliver certain knowledge, are in the nature of movements: only
the objects of the senses remain as they are and endure, precede
and survive, the act of sensation; only the objects of the passions
are permanent and fixed to the extent that they are not devoured by
the attainment of some passionate desire; only the objects of
thoughts, but never thinking itself, are beyond motion and perish-
ability. Processes, therefore, and not ideas, the models and shapes
of the things to be, become the guide for the making and fabricating
activities of homo faber in the modern age.
Hobbes's attempt to introduce the new concepts of making and
reckoning into political philosophy—or, rather, his attempt to
apply the newly discovered aptitudes of making to the realm of
human affairs—was of the greatest importance; modern rational-
ism as it is currently known, with the assumed antagonism of rea-
son and passion as its stock-in-trade, has never found a clearer and
more uncompromising representative. Yet it was precisely the
realm of human affairs where the new philosophy was first found
wanting, because by its very nature it could not understand or even
believe in reality. The idea that only what I am going to make will
be real—perfectly true and legitimate in the realm of fabrication—
is forever defeated by the actual course of events, where nothing
happens more frequently than the totally unexpected. To act in the
form of making, to reason in the form of "reckoning with conse-
quences," means to leave out the unexpected, the event itself, since
it would be unreasonable or irrational to expect what is no more
than an "infinite improbability." Since, however, the event con-
stitutes the very texture of reality within the realm of human af-
fairs, where the "wholly improbable happens regularly," it is
highly unrealistic not to reckon with it, that is, not to reckon with
something with which nobody can safely reckon. The political
philosophy of the modern age, whose greatest representative is still
Hobbes, founders on the perplexity that modern rationalism is
unreal and modern realism is irrational—which is only another way
of saying that reality and human reason have parted company.
Hegel's gigantic enterprise to reconcile spirit with reality (den
Geist mit der Wirklichkeit zu versb'hnen), a reconciliation that is the
[ 300 }
The Vita Activa and the Modem Age
deepest concern of all modern theories of history, rested on the
insight that modern reason foundered on the rock of reality.
The fact that modern world alienation was radical enough to
extend even to the most worldly of human activities, to work and
reification, the making of things and the building of a world, dis-
tinguishes modern attitudes and evaluations even more sharply
from those of tradition than a mere reversal of contemplation and
action, of thinking and doing, would indicate. The break with con-
templation was consummated not with the elevation of man the
maker to the position formerly held by man the contemplator, but
with the introduction of the concept of process into making. Com-
pared with this, the striking new arrangement of hierarchical order
within the vita activa, where fabrication now came to occupy a rank
formerly held by political action, is of minor importance. We saw
before that this hierarchy had in fact, though not expressly, already
been overruled in the very beginnings of political philosophy by
the philosophers' deep-rooted suspicion of politics in general and
action in particular.
The matter is somewhat confused because Greek political phi-
losophy still follows the order laid down by the polis even when it
turns against it; but in their strictly philosophical writings (to
which, of course, one must turn if he wants to know their inner-
most thoughts), Plato as well as Aristotle tends to invert the rela-
tionship between work and action in favor of work. Thus Aris-
totle, in a discussion of the different kinds of cognition in his
Metaphysics, places dianoia and episteme praktike, practical insight and political science, at the lowest rank of his order, and puts
above them the science of fabrication, episteme poietike, which im-
mediately precedes and leads to theoria, the contemplation of
truth.68 And the reason for this predilection in philosophy is by no
means the politically inspired suspicion of action which we men-
tioned before, but the philosophically much more compelling one
that contemplation and fabrication {theoria and poiesis) have an inner affinity and do not stand in the same unequivocal opposition
to each other as contemplation and action. The decisive point of
similarity, at least in Greek philosophy, was that contemplation,
the beholding of something, was considered to be an inherent ele-
66. Metaphysics 1025b25 if., 1064al7 ff.
[ SOI ]
The Human Condition
ment in fabrication as well, inasmuch as the work of the craftsman
was guided by the "idea," the model beheld by him before the
fabrication process had started as well as after it had ended, first
to tell him what to make and then to enable him to judge the
finished product.
Historically, the source of this contemplation, which we find for
the first time described in the Socratic school, is at least twofold.
On one hand, it stands in obvious and consistent connection with
the famous contention of Plato, quoted by Aristotle, that thauma-
zein, the shocked wonder at the miracle of Being, is the beginning
of all philosophy.67 It seems to me highly probable that this Pla-
tonic contention is the immediate result of an experience, perhaps
the most striking one, that Socrates offered his disciples: the sight
of him time and again suddenly overcome by his thoughts and
thrown into a state of absorption to the point of perfect motionless-
ness for many hours. It seems no less plausible that this shocked
wonder should be essentially speechless, that is, that its actual con-
tent should be untranslatable into words. This, at least, would ex-
plain why Plato and Aristotle, who held thaumazein to be the be-
ginning of philosophy, should also agree—despite so many and
such decisive disagreements—that some state of speechlessness,
the essentially speechless state of contemplation, was the end of
philosophy. Theoria, in fact, is only another word for thaumazein;
the contemplation of truth at which the philosopher ultimately ar-
rives is the philosophically purified speechless wonder with which
he began.
There is, however, another side to this matter, which shows it-
self most articulately in Plato's doctrine of ideas, in its content as
well as in its terminology and exemplifications. These reside in the
experiences of the craftsman, who sees before his inner eye the
shape of the model according to which he fabricates his object. To
67. For Plato see Theaetetus 155: Mala gar philosophmt touto to pathos, to thaumazein; ou gar alle arche philosophias e haute ("For wonder is what the philosopher endures most; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this").
Aristotle, who at the beginning of the Metaphysics (982bl2 ff.) seems to repeat Plato almost verbatim—"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin
and at first began to philosophize"—actually uses this wonder in an altogether
different way; to him, the actual impulse to philosophize lies in the desire "to escape ignorance."
[ 302 ]
The Vita Activa and the Modern Age
Plato, this model, which craftsmanship can only imitate but not
create, is no product of the human mind but given to it. As such it
possesses a degree of permanence and excellence which is not ac-
tualized but on the contrary spoiled in its materialization through
the work of human hands. Work makes perishable and spoils the
excellence of what remained eternal so long as it was the object of
mere contemplation. Therefore, the proper attitude toward the
models which guide work and fabrication, that is, toward Platonic
ideas, is to leave them as they are and appear to the inner eye of the
mind. If man only renounces his capacity for work and does not do
anything, he can behold them and thus participate in their eternity.
Contemplation, in this respect, is quite unlike the enraptured state
of wonder with which man responds to the miracle of Being as a
whole. It is and remains part and parcel of a fabrication process
even though it has divorced itself from all work and all doing; in it,
the beholding of the model, which now no longer is to guide any
doing, is prolonged and enjoyed for its own sake.
In the tradition of philosophy, it is this second kind of contem-
plation that became the predominant one. Therefore the motion-
Iessness which in the state of speechless wonder is no more than an
incidental, unintended result of absorption, becomes now the con-
dition and hence the outstanding characteristic of the vita con-
templativa. It is not wonder that overcomes and throws man into
motionlessness, but it is through the conscious cessation of activ-
ity, the activity of making, that the contemplative state is reached.
If one reads medieval sources on the joys and delights of contem-
plation, it is as though the philosophers wanted to make sure that
homofaber would heed the call and let his arms drop, finally realiz-
ing that his greatest desire, the desire for permanence and immor-
tality, cannot be fulfilled by his doings, but only when he realizes
that the beautiful and eternal cannot be made. In Plato's philoso-
phy, speechless wonder, the beginning and the end of philosophy,
together with the philosopher's love for the eternal and the crafts-
man's desire for permanence and immortality, permeate each other
until they are almost indistinguishable. Yet the very fact that the
philosophers' speechless wonder seemed to be an experience re-
served for the few, while the craftsmen's contemplative glance was
[ 303 ]
The Hu?mn Condition
known by many, weighed heavily in favor of a contemplation pri-
marily derived from the experiences of homo faber. It already
weighed heavily with Plato, who drew his examples from the realm
of making because they were closer to a more general human ex-
perience, and it weighed even more heavily where some kind of
contemplation and meditation was required of everybody, as in
medieval Christianity.
Thus it was not primarily the philosopher and philosophic
speechless wonder that molded the concept and practice of con-
templation and the vita contemplativa, but rather homo faber in disguise; it was man the maker and fabricator, whose job it is to do
violence to nature in order to build a permanent home for himself,
and who now was persuaded to renounce violence together with
all activity, to leave things as they are, and to find his home in the
contemplative dwelling in the neighborhood of the imperishable
and eternal. Homo faber could be persuaded to this change of atti-
tude because he knew contemplation and some of its delights from
his own experience; he did not need a complete change of heart, a
true periagoge, a radical turnabout. All he had to do was let his
arms drop and prolong indefinitely the act of beholding the eidos,
the eternal shape and model he had formerly wanted to imitate and
whose excellence and beauty he now knew he could only spoil
through any attempt at reification.
If, therefore, the modem challenge to the priority of contempla-
tion over every kind of activity had done no more than turn upside
down the established order between making and beholding, it
would still have remained in the traditional framework. This
framework was forced wide open, however, when in the under-
standing of fabrication itself the emphasis shifted entirely away
from the product and from the permanent, guiding model to the
fabrication process, away from the question of what a thing is and
what kind of thing was to be produced to the question of how and
through which means and processes it had come into being and
could be reproduced. For this implied both that contemplation was
no longer believed to yield truth and that it had lost its position in
the vita activa itself and hence within the range of ordinary human
experience.
[ 304 ]
The Vita Activa and the Modern Age
43
T H E D E F E A T O F H o W O F a b e r A N D T H E
P R I N C I P L E O F
H A P P I N E S S
If one considers only the events that led into the modern age and
reflects solely upon the immediate consequences of Galileo's dis-
covery, which must have struck the great minds of the seventeenth
century with the compelling force of self-evident truth, the re-
versal of contemplation and fabrication, or rather the elimination
of contemplation from the range of meaningful human capacities,
is almost a matter of course. It seems equally plausible that this
reversal should have elevated homo faber, the maker and fabricator,
rather than man the actor or man as animal laborans, to the highest
range of human possibilities.
And, indeed, among the outstanding characteristics of the mod-
ern age from its beginning to our own time we find the typical atti-
tudes of homo faber: his instrumentalization of the world, his con-
fidence in tools and in the productivity of the maker of artificial
objects; his trust in the all-comprehensive range of the means-end
category, his conviction that every issue can be solved and every
human motivation reduced to the principle of utility; his sover-
eignty, which regards everything given as material and thinks of
the whole of nature as of "an immense fabric from which we can
cut out whatever we want to resew it however we like";68 his
equation of intelligence with ingenuity, that is, his contempt for all
68. Henri Bergson, Evolution crktrue (1948), p. 157. An analysis of Bergson's position in modern philosophy would lead us too far afield. But his insistence on
the priority of homo faber over homo sapiens and on fabrication as the source of human intelligence, as well as his emphatic opposition of life to intelligence, is
very suggestive. Bergson's philosophy could easily be read like a case study of
how the modern age's earlier conviction of the relative superiority of making over
thinking was then superseded and annihilated by its more recent conviction of an
absolute superiority of life over everything else. It is because Bergson himself still united both of these elements that he could exert such a decisive influence on the
beginnings of labor theories in France. Not only the earlier works of lidouard
Berth and Georges Sorel, but also Adriano Tilgher's Homo faber (1929), owe
their terminology chiefly to Bergson; this is still true of Jules Vuillemin's L'&tre et le travail (1949), although Vuillemin, like almost every present-day French writer, thinks primarily in Hegelian terms.
[ 305 }
The Human Condition
thought which cannot be considered to be "the first step . . . for
the fabrication of artificial objects, particularly of tools to make
tools, and to vary their fabrication indefinitely";69 finally, his
matter-of-course identification of fabrication with action.
It would lead us too far afield to follow the ramifications of this
mentality, and it is not necessary, for they are easily detected in
the natural sciences, where the purely theoretical effort is under-
stood to spring from the desire to create order out of "mere dis-
order," the "wild variety of nature,"70 and where therefore homo
faber's predilection for patterns for things to be produced replaces
the older notions of harmony and simplicity. It can be found in
classical economics, whose highest standard is productivity and
whose prejudice against non-productive activities is so strong that
even Marx could justify his plea for justice for laborers only by
misrepresenting the laboring, non-productive activity in terms of
work and fabrication. It is most articulate, of course, in the prag-
matic trends of modern philosophy, which are not only character-
ized by Cartesian world alienation but also by the unanimity with
which English philosophy from the seventeenth century onward
and French philosophy in the eighteenth century adopted the prin-
ciple of utility as the key which would open all doors to the ex-
planation of human motivation and behavior. Generally speaking,
the oldest conviction of homo faber—that "man is the measure of
all things"—advanced to the rank of a universally accepted com-
monplace.
What needs explanation is not the modern esteem of homo faber
but the fact that this esteem was so quickly followed by the eleva-
tion of laboring to the highest position in the hierarchical order of
the vita activa. This second reversal of hierarchy within the vita
activa came about more gradually and less dramatically than either
the reversal of contemplation and action in general or the reversal
of action and fabrication in particular. The elevation of laboring
was preceded by certain deviations and variations from the tradi-
tional mentality of homo faber which were highly characteristic of
the modern age and which, indeed, arose almost automatically
from the very nature of the events that ushered it in. What changed
69. Bergson, op. cit., p. 140.
70. Bronowski, op. cit.
[ 306 ]
The Vita Activa and the Modern Age
the mentality of homo faber was the central position of the concept
of process in modernity. As fa