Page - 78 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

79 | www.limina-graz.eu Isabella Guanzini | Ideas of Freedom dality of political action, is conceived of as the practice through which a person gives meaning to their life, brings something new into existence, and separates themself from their biological dimension by affirming their singularity. Nobody can refrain from acting without losing their human- ity. What truly matters for Arendt is the actual experience of action, and, therefore, of freedom. “Men are free – as distinguished from their pos- sessing the gift for freedom – as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same” (Arendt 1961, 153). That is the reason why Arendt thinks that only politics is able to bring to light the “gift of freedom”. According to this perspective, Arendt retrieves the peculiar experience of the polis, emphasising the dimension of dialogue. For Arendt, dialogue – and more generally speech – is the exemplary form of action, not so much for the content that it conveys as for its capacity to express with the greatest clarity the quality of action as the way to resist and re-articulate what happens, as the faculty to intervene in reality. Action and speech enable the delineation of a space of belonging, of mutual bond, and vital exchange, which can result in “the joy of inhabiting together with others a world whose reality is guaranteed for each by the presence of all” (Arendt 1998, 244). What takes shape with word and deed is the essential feature that distinguishes us as human beings. “Speech and action reveal this unique distinctness. Through them, men distinguish themselves instead of being merely distinct; they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physi- cal objects, but qua men. This appearance, as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human. This is true of no other ac- tivity in the vita activa. Men can very well live without labouring, they can force others to labour for them, and they can very well decide merely to use and enjoy the world of things without themselves adding a single useful object to it; the life of an exploiter or slaveholder and the life of a parasite may be unjust, but they certainly are human. A life without speech and without action, on the other hand – and this is the only way of life that in earnest has renounced all appearance and all vanity in the biblical sense of the word – is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men. With word “Men are free as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same.”