Dr Shriddha Shah, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, SIAS delivered a talk on ‘Animal Laborans to Homo Faber: Rethinking Labour and Work Through Arendt and Marx’ at Human Sciences Research Centre, IIIT, Hyderabad on 1 October 2025.
About the Talk
The concept of labour with its various implications is central to the structuring of the modern political economy. It is also the cornerstone of Karl Marx’s assessment of the capitalist political economy. Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, offers a critique of Marx’s thesis on labour, and thereby his ensuing assessment of society and politics. This paper argues that there is a significant change in the conceptualisation of labour, as discussed by Hannah Arendt, particularly in her examination of the distinction between the concepts of labour and work.
Marx in his thesis makes no distinction between work and labour. However, for Arendt the lack of this distinction is a critical component of her criticism of Marx’s thesis on labour. This paper addresses this issue and argues that Arendt’s thesis rests on presuppositions of metaphysical and methodological dualism, in contrast to those of Marx, and the changed conception of labour is not contingent or a matter of oversight but is based on commitments to different points of view. The paper further argues that this change also influences subsequent formulations of labour and its issues, in contemporary assessments of the political economy.