This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof.

中文翻译：

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出生还是出生？Arendt和Cavarero关于出生的人类状况

本文通过阿德里亚娜·卡瓦雷罗（Adriana Cavarero）的女权主义出生哲学，对汉娜·阿伦特（Hannah Arendt）的出生概念进行了批判性分析。首先，我认为Arendtian出生的力量在于其扎根于唯一性本体论，以及对人类多元性和关系性的承诺。接下来，我用Cavarero追踪了有关Arendtian出生性的三个关键问题，即，它很抽象。问题上没有体现和性中立；并依赖于假设平等而不是不对称的脆弱性模型。在文章的最后部分中，最后一个问题得到了进一步的发展，在这里，我研究了这样一种观念，即对于卡瓦雷罗而言，分娩成为一个概念，我们可以通过该概念将护理和爱的行为与伤害和暴力行为区分开并在规范上加以区分。在这里坚持规范的区别取决于脆弱性和无助感之间的概念区别。为了保持出生场景的道德潜力，我认为我们必须坚持Cavarero赋予其的特性，正如本文旨在证明的那样，这些最终在Arendtian的说明中丢失了。