speech that constitutes action might not be dependent upon work, the outcomes of action are entirely
contingent upon homo faber.
In order to become worldly things, that is, deeds and facts and events and patterns of thoughts or ideas,
they must first be seen, heard, and remembered and then transformed, reified as it were, into things—into
sayings of poetry, the written page or the printed book, into paintings or sculpture, into all sorts of records,
documents, and monuments. The whole factual world of human affairs depends for its reality and its
continued existence, first, upon the presence of others who have seen and heard and will remember, and
second, on the transformation of the intangible into the tangibility of things” (Arendt 1958, 95).
The second key aspect of the relevance of action to World is their historical partnership: the
position of political action (properly understood) since Plato has declined proportionately with the durability
of and man’s commitment to the World itself. The progressive historical detachment of action from freedom
is associated with steadily increasing contempt for or dismissal of the World. One might draw the
preliminary conclusion that it was a basic suspicion or hostility toward politics that initially created the
conditions of World alienation. For Plato, traumatized by the execution of his teacher Socrates, the political
was fundamentally untrustworthy. It was, above all, a problem for man rather than his raison d’etre, a
problem that he sought to rectify in
The Republic, when he constructed a hypothetical city entirely
around the ideal of philosophical, and not political, rule. For Plato it was the pursuit and attainment of
philosophical truth and not political freedom that represented the highest human good. Plato also was the
first to theoretically detatch the political from freedom and situate it in within the human activity of work
(specifically in the domain of legislation), a move that produced serious consequences for Arendt. By
deviating from preSocratic tradition of politics as freedom, Plato operated under the false impression of
politics as rule, governing the otherwise unruly masses so that philosopher kings may pursue philosophical
truth. Far from Arendt’s conception of politics as the highest human activity, Plato sought to transcend it
Convention