Politics as Endurance: Hannah Arendt and the Three Deaths of Being

Abstract

This thesis examines Hannah Arendt's vita activa in the context of the contemporary political world that is marked by the inclusion of a variety of beings beyond mere human plurality. Understanding that Arendt's work is in opposition to the isolating tendencies of philosophical and bureaucratic thought, I look to the processes of labor and work as methods by which togetherness and worldliness can be recovered. Beginning with Richard Sennett's The Craftsman and Vanessa Lemm's Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy, I draw out a common thread in projects that consider non-human actors as capable of politicking: endurance. Building upon Arendt's work in The Human Condition and On Violence, I suggest that the vita diutina, the enduring life, and the three deaths of being serve as a useful ways of understanding already ongoing political projects that include non-human beings.