Hello everybody,
This week, we’re looking at new life, new starts, and Hannah Arendt.
Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.
It’s done.
The holidays are over, the Christmas trees are down, and you’ve secretly returned that sweater you pretended to like.
And as we all rush back to work, there’s a specter haunting our conversations: the New Year’s resolution.
Now, in my experience, there are three kinds of “resolution” people.
First, you have the cynics. The cynics post mocking pictures of crowded gyms and sneering comments about “Jan 1st joggers.” They assume — not without evidence — that almost all of the New Year's resolutioners will have given up or fallen short by February. “I don’t even know why you try,” the cynic says.
Second, you have the shruggers. These are those who just don’t care about resolutions.
“My resolution is to give up resolutions,” my dad quips every year.
But there are also those shruggers who will point out that there is nothing special about January. If you want to change, change. If you want to give up, give up. Don’t wait for some arbitrary movement of the Earth to do so.
Third, there are the “new year, new me” lot. These are the ones who love a resolution and love telling others about it. For this group, January is a blank page yet to be written. All of the mistakes and tears belong in a diary labeled “2025.” And the moment the clock strikes midnight, we throw that diary onto the bonfire.
I am a card-carrying resolutioner. I love a new project and enjoy seeing how far and for how long my willpower will last. In years gone by, I’ve given up chocolate, alcohol, and fizzy drinks. This year, I’m giving up interprandial snacking. (Wish me luck.)
So, I thought it only fitting that we look a bit more closely at what philosophy has to say about new starts. This week, we look at “natality.”
Go well,
Jonny
If you’re looking for a good New Year’s resolution, what about learning more philosophy? The Mini Philosophy Club is live this year — with more content, podcasts, and online events. If you want to sign up, you can do so below:
We are not made but born.
In her book The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt introduces the idea of “natality,” which is about our capacity for new beginnings. Arendt argues that philosophy and literature are often obsessed with mortality — the fragility and finitude of life. And while it is true that we are “born to die,” fixating solely on endings misses a vital dimension of the human experience.
Arendt argues that Western thought has come to be “death-ridden.” We interpret everything about life through the lens of its eventual end. Philosophers have long loved the “memento mori“ meditation, which says, “remember, you will die, so get living while you still can.” It’s found in Ecclesiastes, Michel de Montaigne, and is a favorite of Stoicism. In more modern times, Martin Heidegger argued that death is an omnipresent force that defines everything we do. We are walking a path with only one destination. We each meander this way and that, but ultimately, we end up meeting the same grim and cowled figure.
Natality challenges this death fixation. It suggests that we should not be defined as “mortals” but as “natals.” When a child is born, the world is offered a new set of possibilities — suddenly, there is a new actor on the stage of history. And for Arendt, what makes humans unique is our ability to start again. We are under no obligation to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done because, as Augustine suggested, the beginning of a human is the beginning of a “someone” who did not exist before. Yes, we will die. But our living will have forever changed the Universe.
Arendt and her successors argued that the human condition is not only about endings, but about constant, radical beginnings. Each of us contains the potential to reshape the world — however that might look. Within each of us is the “seed of change.” We have the power to interrupt the automatic flow of history — to stop the “machine” of social exchange and start something entirely unpredictable.
The seeds of growth
Arendt focused on the political and existential implications of “natality,” but thinkers like Adriana Cavarero and Luce Irigaray added something extra.
Humans do not spontaneously generate. The gods do not pull us from an Elysian hat. We are not “made” from nothing but are born from a mother. Everyone reading this newsletter was carried and nurtured by a mother. And so Irigaray and Cavarero argue that when we talk about “natality,” we should focus more on the forgotten and repressed symbol of the feminine as a symbol of caring love.
When we think about change or growth, we should not see it as some kind of individual resolve. We are not born alone, we don’t live alone, so why would we change alone? Instead, we should see growth in terms of “physis,” or the generative power of nature. You cannot shut your eyes and imagine a tree into existence. You must plant a seed in fertile soil and tend the ground.
The point is that almost all change happens when we allow ourselves to be held up and pushed along. Reach out to others to ask their advice. Ask your friends to pick you up when you stumble. Turn toward the world in which we are cradled. It is not a weakness to call on others; it is often the only way we can change and carry on
In 1915, the Austrian Gustav Klimt painted his famous Death and Life. The painting features a busy mosaic of humanity — a loving couple, a mother with her child, an old woman. They are all surrounded by flowers and vibrant designs. It’s a bright and hopeful montage of life. To the left, the Grim Reaper waits. His body is made up of tombs and gravestones. His grin is suitably evil. But I’ve always seen the painting not as a kind of grisly memento mori. I take great hope from it. Because while the Reaper might pluck ones and twos from the mosaic, and while we all, individually, will die, the dancing, glowing throng of life will continue.
We fail, and we win. We break, and we mend. We die, and we live.
Next week, we’re exploring antisociability, and so I’m asking:
What, if anything, makes someone “antisocial”?
Send me your thoughts via email or comment below.
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Listen to my spoken voiceover of this article here:
