One of the most innovative and surprising concepts emerging from Hannah Arendt’s works is the concept of natality, which is closely related to the concept of birth. However, its fragmentary references are scattered throughout the Arendtian corpus, and the literature has already noted the lack of clarity and in-depth explanations about it (Cavarero, 2014: Inclinations; Söderback, 2018: “Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born”, in Hypatia 33). This leaves us with “a concept that remains substantially underinvestigated” (Cavarero, 2014: 17).

The connection between natality and action is, nonetheless, clear, and could offer us a way to explore the very nature of natality, which Arendt identified as the core category in political thought (The Human Condition, 1958: 9). Since action, for Arendt, consists in the capacity to begin something anew, the faculty of action is ontologically rooted in natality (Ibid.: 247). Both action and speech—allowing the insertion of the human being in the world of human affairs through what Arendt calls a second birth (Ibid.: 176-177)—are in themselves relational activities, requiring the presence of others. According to Arendt, their fundamental condition is human plurality, which in turn entails the twofold character of equality and distinction (Ibid.: 175).

This paper explores whether natality and birth, closely connected to action as its paradigm, also have a relational character and whether the mode in which relationality is expressed in birth and natality might entail some form of equality and some form of difference. The concepts of birth and natality in the works of Arendt will be then analyzed though the triad of relationality, equality, and difference, in dialogue with feminist thinkers such as Adriana Cavarero.