With Prof. James Bernauer
这个标题的翻译可以说翻译得非常不好了
Hannah Arendt 在one of her major works The Human Condition 中写道：
vita activa 是一个和 vita contemplativa 相对的概念。与前辈哲学家都在 argue the contemplative life is the highest 相反，Arendt 重视 action —与之呼应的就是 vita activa
（当然 Arendt 的 action 也不能直接翻译成行动 action 是 Arendt 在 THC 中提出的一个 tripartite system 的一个概念 另外两个是 labor 和 work
插入一段当时上课写得 journal
We cannot emphasize enough Arendt’s tripartite structure of The Human Condition: labor, work and action. She writes, “Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor. The human condition of labor is life itself.” (7) “Labor assures not only individual survival, but the life of the species.” (8) Labor is never-ending and creates nothing of permanence. Work, she writes, “is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species’ ever-recurring life cycle.” “The human condition of work is worldliness” since “work provides an ‘artificial’ world of things, distinctly from all natural surroundings.” Work is not meant to endure, either. But there is hope in endurance—artworks. The highest activity goes to action. “Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.” (7) And such plurality, as stated above, is closely linked to natality. For Arendt, excellence is lived out by action and cannot be achieved until we are with others (plurality). And only action among the three can be connected to politics.
因此这个电影起名叫 vita activa 至少有三层含义
一是说电影是拿 action 来刻画 Arendt 的，是强调 Arendt 做了什么，穿插她的思想，而非是以文字 contemplating 她的人生
二是 同时是在说电影本身是一个 action — in the sense, the form of the film corresponds to its content
三是强调 Arendt 是一个独一无二的哲学家 in the sense that you can't categorize her 是的 她是一个political philosopher 但是她的思想中涉及了很多 critical theory/Foucauldian philosophy 的东西（虽然不知道她有没有读过 Foucault）这一层 uniqueness 也在电影的最后出现了 也和她 atribute a positive value to vita activa 相关
不管怎么说 和 积极生活 都没什么太大的关系
不过我也不知道要怎么翻译才是好翻译……
