The Radical Resistance of Being Born
Costantino Esposito - Interview with Professor Costantino Esposito 50 years after Hannah Arendt's death.
Epochal Change: It has been fifty years since the death of Hannah Arendt. If we were to summarize her legacy today, where should we look? Is it merely in her famous analysis of totalitarianism, or is there a deeper thread connecting her work?
Costantino Esposito: Costantino Esposito: To assess her legacy, we must certainly look to her most seminal contributions: her 1951 reflections on The Origins of Totalitarianism; her analysis of the active life (The Human Condition / Vita activa, 1958), in which she defined human beings as animals engaged in “labor” in the biological sense (animal laborans), as working beings who produce artifacts (homo faber), and as political animals (zoon politikon) conscious of the ends of their actions; and her controversial 11963 report on the “banality of evil” regarding the Eichmann trial.
However, the true connecting thread running through all these works, up to her posthumous The Life of the Mind (1978), is a philosophical and existential passion for the crucial role of thought. For Arendt, thought was not a faculty detached from life or mere theoretical elaboration; it was the fundamental action of our "being there" in the world.
Epochal Change: You mention her connection to German philosophy. Arendt was a student of Heidegger. How does her conception of human existence compare to his, particularly regarding human finitude?
Costantino Esposito: Arendt always maintained her bond with German philosophy, particularly with Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger, despite her complex life as a Jewish emigrant fleeing Germany. The radical question uniting Arendt and Heidegger is: What does it mean that we are finite beings?.
For Heidegger, our finitude lies in the fact that we are "thrown" into the world, suspended in existence without a clear origin or end, which makes us a "being-towards-death".
For Arendt, however, we are finite primarily because we are born. This seems paradoxical, as "finite" usually suggests an ending. But Arendt’s great contribution is helping us understand that being born is not just a past fact, but an event that compels us to think. Just as death for Heidegger is distinct from the mere cessation of life, "natality" for Arendt is not just about being birthed; it is a permanent, original dimension. As long as we live, we are permanently "born".
Epochal Change: How does this philosophical concept of "natality" translate to her political analysis, specifically regarding totalitarianism?
Costantino Esposito: It is central. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt asserts that modern totalitarians differ from ancient tyrannies because their distinctive character is to "eliminate thought". They do not just deprive people of freedom or control their bodies; they dismantle the "memory of the beginning".
Totalitarianism forces a mass consensus that destroys the critical thought of the individual. But the fact that every human is a "beginning" means they represent the possibility of novelty and freedom.
Epochal Change: So, for Arendt, "natality" is a political category?
Costantino Esposito: Precisely. In Vita activa, she argues that since action is the political activity par excellence, natality—not mortality—is the central category of political thought.
This distinguishes political thought from metaphysical thought. Metaphysical thought (like Heidegger’s) focuses on the impossibility of being (death). Political thought, in its original sense, is a thought of action—of the human being as an acting agent. Arendt often cites Augustine here: Initium ut esset, homo creatus est ("Man was created so that there could be a beginning"). Being born means we always start over; novelty is produced by our actions.
Epochal Change: In a world often facing ruin or despair, what hope does this perspective offer?
Costantino Esposito: Arendt argues that the "miracle that preserves the world" from its natural ruin is the fact of natality. It is the root of our faculty to act. The birth of new human beings represents a new beginning.
This experience confers faith and hope to human affairs—two characteristics Greek antiquity ignored. Even though she was not a Christian, Arendt found the most glorious expression of this trust in the Gospel announcement: "A child is born among us". For her, this is "good news" because of every birth we can say: "A child is born for us".
Epochal Change: Ultimately, how does this serve as a resistance to power today?
Costantino Esposito: Natality constitutes the most radical point of resistance to power.
Why? Because while ideologies are oriented toward a "must-be" (a duty to do or change things), being born is never a duty. It is not ethical; it is ontic and ontological. It is an event, a surprise, the unforeseen. Therefore, the simple reality of being born is a resistance that power cannot fully co-opt or eliminate.
Costantino Esposito is a contemporary Italian philosopher specializing in the history of philosophy and metaphysics, primarily affiliated with the University of Bari Aldo Moro. He is renowned for his scholarship on thinkers such as Heidegger, Kant, and Suárez, as well as his work on contemporary nihilism and its roots in the Western metaphysical tradition. Esposito serves as a Full Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Bari, where he directs research in metaphysics and modern and contemporary philosophy. Beyond his home institution, he frequently lectures abroad—including in Switzerland—and is an active voice in public discourse concerning the interplay between faith, reason, and culture.
