The power of beginnings: philosophical foundation of a biographical laboratory in prison (Hannah Arendt)

Abstract

Human life (bíos), unlike biological existence (zoé), is made up of a number of fulfilled and longed-for initiatives that discover someone, their distinction and their novelty with respect to everything that exists or to come. Naturally, this renewable, and in no way mechanical, character of human life, which subverts any previous prognosis and always engenders something new, depends on the possibility of narrating. Because in the act of narration the human faculty to initiate, successively, and until the last man, his own existence is revealed. That man is a pure beginning means that he has the power to relate and transform the world, based on words and actions that depend on his initiative. This arendtian understanding of the human condition constitutes the philosophical and methodological assumption of a biographical laboratory carried out in prison, which represents a space of appearance where unexpected beginnings are announced.