著者

櫻井 一成

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.70, no.1, pp.37-48, 2019 (Released:2021-05-08)

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Philosophers often liken living well to creating an art work. I call this conception “poetics of life.” Hanna Arendt’s thought about human existence is very unique in that she interprets poetics of life concretely and rejects it clearly. On the contrary, there are few philosophers who concretize the metaphor and evaluate it negatively. In this paper, by replying to her criticism, I try to develop poetics of life in the right direction. The ground for her rejection to poetics of life comes from her famous typology of vita activa. In The Human Condition (1958), Arendt divides human activity into three types, namely “labor”, “work”/ “fabrication,” and “action.” Since Arendt categorizes creation of art works into “work” and regards “action” as proper activity for human being, she cannot accept the metaphor “to live well is to create a work of art.” However, investigating detailed descriptions of examples of “action”, it is revealed that the general explanation for the difference between “work” and “action” does not comprehend the essential feature of “action”; the function of formation that integrates parts already existing ad-lib. By this function, this paper will show that Arendt’s theory is capable of containing the idea of “making one’s own life.”