NOTES ON THE TEXT ITSELF

"Public" can mean either "Society" or "Protection of private wealth".

The permanence earlier inherent in the common world is now replaced by impermanent commodities.  These become more permanent as capitalist processes, i.e., the generation of new wealth, but these do not constitute a stable structure [since capitalism itself is devoted to nothing except the generation of new wealth, regardless of structure looks best for that purpose].  Accumulation of wealth itself [and alone] becomes what is permanent — "the only common concern left".

The threat is from the elimination of the private;  hence the rediscovery of "intimacy" as a modern theme.  But more deeply, we need to look at the earlier "non-privative traits of privacy" [meaning, as I interpret it, "those traits of privacy that are not characterized by a lack of something but have some positive character].  There are two of these.

1. Private possessions are more urgently and immediately needed.  This necessity is creative of life;  it isn't a restriction of freedom.  [This is similar to Marx's belief that people actualize themselves through their labor;  labor is not inherently something negative and oppressive.]  [What an amazing idea!  Think of how much of our world this turns topsy-turvy if we take it seriously!]  [I assume she is saying or implying that because they are so divorced from the immediacy of private possessions, capitalist processes are not constitutive of life.  Note her specific statement that capitalist enterprises are now too big to be managed in a personal way.  Note also how much corporations these days try to imply that their activities are just like those of the corner shoe repair shop.  Arendt's perspective reveals a line of weakness here, just as Locke did in splitting the large aristocracy from the small.]
2. Guarantee "the darkness".  A public life is a shallow life.  Private property nurtures the public realm;  it isn't merely a means of capitalist accumulation.  [And, it seems to me, it isn't either a place to hide from the world.  The rich products of its "darkness" eventually bloom forth.]  [Note the connections to my idea of dialectics, particularly the lower "I" or "Internalized" level in the diagram.]
3. [Continuing into the §, "The Location of Human Activities":]  Goodness is private in Christian [and other?] thought.  Memory / awareness will destroy goodness.  "Public goodness" is not goodness.  [This would seem to imply that politicians cannot be good insofar as they make a career out of appearing good.]  This is not true of wisdom, which is constituted publicly — at the very least, in an internal dialogue.

MY OWN NOTES

Present & past;  far-fetched connections;  word origins

Having a body (and the necessities therefrom) were hidden.  [But now seem more public.]  "Privvies".  The uproar over use of the term "vagina" in a high school production of "The Vagina Monologues".  Back in the Victorian era, as I understand it, women did not have "legs" but only "limbs" or even (believe it or not) "understandings".  Breastfeeding.  Pregnancy.  Nakedness vs. pornography.  The "Bodyworlds" exhibition.

What did you get out of this?