The capacity to initiate new beginnings is the fundamental human source of freedom

Evidence

Arendt, like Orwell, asserts the possibility of new beginnings that do not cleave to already visible lines of power. She reminds us that every beginning, seen from the perspective of the framework that it interrupts, is a miracle. The capacity for performing such miracles is entirely human, she argues, because it is the source of all freedom: “What usually remains intact in the epochs of petrification and foreordained doom is the faculty of freedom itself, the sheer capacity to begin, which animates and inspires all human activities and is the hidden source… of all great and beautiful things.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1658

Categorization

• XREF: Arendt’s natality links to the reader’s prior engagement with political theory on democratic renewal; also connects thematically to the institutional-design thread from Milgrom’s work. — connects to: Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1075; Freedom is the human capacity to put beings out of circuit behind a nothingness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 225; Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: Arendt’s account of natality as a rebuttal to instrumentarian determinism — is a ‘beginning’ available to excluded subjects or only to citizens?

Broader Connections

• Freedom is the for-itself’s permanent ability to nihilate its own being #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075
• Freedom is the human capacity to put beings out of circuit behind a nothingness #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 225
• Freedom is the original upsurge that posits one’s ultimate ends. #corroborates (0.90)
• Freedom is the capacity to begin, which logic cannot compel. #corroborates (0.90) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1072
• Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction #corroborates (0.85)
• Freedom is the foundational condition of all action #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1069