Human Condition - Use of The Term

Use of The Term

The term has been used in André Malraux’s novel (1933) and René Magritte’s paintings 1933 & 1935, both titled La Condition Humaine, Hannah Arendt’s book (1958) and Masaki Kobayashi’s film series (1959-1961).

Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith has written a number of books on the subject of the human condition including Free: The End of the Human Condition (1988); Beyond the Human Condition (1991); A Species In Denial (2003); and Freedom (2011); and defines the human condition as "the agonising, underlying, core, real question in all of human life, of are humans good or are we possibly the terrible mistake that all the evidence seems to unequivocally indicate we might be?", arguing that science has now provided an answer to the human condition that defends and liberates humans.