Arendt uses the term animal laborans (“laboring animal”) to refer to the subject of labor, while homo faber (“human being the maker”) denotes the subject of work. This disjunction between the animal and human functions of the vita activa is an important conceptual symbol for Arendt’s argument in The Human Condition. The two terms connote a clear image: the contrast between the animal and human activities that define our existence.

Labor addresses the needs of natural or biological life that we share with other animals. Work, by contrast, refers to the specifically human capacity to make objects of use with an enduring presence that help to fabricate a world. An important component of the human condition is rooted in nature, but this does not cover the entire range of the vita activa. Homo faber is distinguished by the notion of instrumentality, the “in order to” of using some means, say tools and materials, to achieve some further end, the construction of a chair or table. Labor is tied to the private needs and sensations of the body, while work is associated with human hands and its creation of a concrete, visible object. These metaphors help to clarify Arendt’s abstract distinction between labor and work and its implications for oppositions like private/public.