Vita activa temporal experiences and the challenges of intergenerational transmission

Abstract

In his foreword to the French edition of The Human Condition, Paul Ricoeur suggests the importance of temporality as an interpretative category of Arendt’s description of human activities. Departing from this interpretative key, the present article seeks to link the temporal experiences of Vita Activa to the political responsibility of educators towards the newcomers and the durability of the world. We suggest that it is precisely in the tension and complementarity estabilshed among the temporal dimensions of the animal laborans’, the homo faber’s and the zoon politikon’s experiences that may flourish the fragile possibility of politics as a worthy response to plurality as a way of life in a common world.