Vita activa oder Vom tätigen Leben

What do we do when we are active? "Vita activa" in its original sense refers to working, producing, and acting. Hannah Arendt's comprehensive analysis primarily focuses on these three fundamental activities. She further examines how they have evolved throughout history into modern times. Arendt's engagement with the fetish of work and consumption in modern working society, in connection with the decline of a culture of political public life, forms the core of her political theory. Kurt Sontheimer wrote about this: "To philosophy, as a theoretical discipline aimed at the pure understanding of nature, she opposed politics as the sphere of practice, as the realm of acting individuals.".