Page - 79 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

80 | www.limina-graz.eu Isabella Guanzini | Ideas of Freedom and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the na- ked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon us by necessity, like labour, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative” (Arendt 1998, 176–177). The emphasis placed on the category of “word” is the unmistakable trait of Arendt’s “untimely Greekness”, which understands speech not as a form of language aiming at communicating or providing information (as it is the case with its modern usage), but rather as a dialogical game, in which the identity of the subject reveals itself, more precisely as the possibility for hu- man beings to articulate the meaning of their actions as well as to give voice to their opinions about common issues within a shared space. Plurality and human togetherness mark political action within the public space, which, for Arendt, is the only true human space. From her viewpoint, the modern emphasis on privacy is just an illusion, an ill-advised threat against the so- cial condition of man. “Private life” denies fundamental aspects of human beings’ existence, depriving them of an authentically human life and of the reality granted by being recognized, seen, and felt by others, in the cru- cial reciprocity that makes each human an interrelated being. Being-with- others means belonging to a common world, through which it is possible to establish mutual relationships and, at the same time, keep an appropriate distance from the other. Furthermore, Arendt underlines that for the Greeks [archein] and for the Romans [agere], acting amounts to taking initiatives, setting something in motion, making something happen in the world. In this sense, freedom corresponds to the capacity to begin, to do the unexpected, with which all human beings are gifted by virtue of being born. Action as the realization of freedom is therefore rooted in natality, in the fact that each birth repre- sents a new beginning and the introduction of novelty in the world. This is “Private life” denies fundamental aspects of human beings’ existence, depriving them of the reality granted by being recognized, seen, and felt by others. “A life without speech and without action is literally dead to the world.”