She distinguishes three sorts of activity (labor, work, and action) and discusses how they have been affected by changes in Western history.

Karl Marx flipped the hierarchy, claiming that the vita contemplativa is merely a superstructure on the fundamental basic life-processes of a society.

The vita activa may be divided into three sorts of activities: labor, work and action.

Slaves and subordinated women were confined to the private realm where they met the biological necessities of the head of the household.

[4] Arendt claims that her distinction between labor and work has been disregarded by philosophers throughout history even though it has been preserved in many European languages.

Labor is human activity directed at meeting biological (and perhaps other) necessities for self-preservation and the reproduction of the species.

In the modern world, not just slaves, but everyone has come to be defined by their labor: We are job-holders, and we must perform our jobs to meet our needs.

But Marx then contradicts himself in foreseeing a day when production allows the proletariat to throw off the shackles of their oppressors and be free from labor entirely.

Work involves an element of violation or violence in which the worker interrupts nature in order to obtain and shape raw materials.

Work comprises the whole process, from the original idea for the object, to the obtaining of raw materials, to the finished product.

Kant's claim that humanity is an end in itself shows just how much this instrumental conception of reason has dominated our thinking.

[9] "Human plurality, the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction.

Philosophers like Plato, disliking action's unpredictability, modeled the ideal polis on the household.

[14] Arendt thinks that three great events determined the character of the modern age: "the discovery of America and the ensuing exploration of the whole earth; the Reformation, which by expropriating ecclesiastical and monastic possessions started the two-fold process of individual expropriation and the accumulation of social wealth; the invention of the telescope and the development of a new science that considers the nature of the earth from the viewpoint of the universe.

[16] The shrinking distances brought about by exploration and transportation technology makes humans more an inhabitant of the Earth than of their particular place within it.

Ironically, the outcome of the scientific revolution is that current theories have become so bizarre and that perhaps no one can grasp the world they describe.

Meanwhile, science now further alienates humans from the world by unleashing processes on Earth that previously occurred only further out in the universe.

[17] The consequence of this world alienation for philosophy has been an intense focus on the self, the one remaining sphere of certainty and knowledge.

That he made the discoveries with a telescope, with a product of human work, signals an important change in science.

The philosopher has consequently been relegated to a position of relative insignificance, merely puzzling over what the scientists have shown.

Until the end, Arendt was unaware that precisely the loss of the contemplative capacity leads to the victory, that she herself criticized, of the "animal laborans", which subjects all human activities to work... Life active degenerates into hyperactivity and ends in burnout, not only of the psyche, but also of the entire planet.