Rethinking Birth and Maternity as Philosophical Categories: Hannah Arendt's Notion Of Natality In Dialogue With Contemporary Feminist Thought

我这个项目的目的是通过重新思考“出生”和“孕产”这两个哲学范畴来质疑20世纪欧洲哲学中的“死亡论”转向。我建议通过从当代女权主义思想中进一步借鉴汉娜·阿伦特的出生概念来实现这一点。死亡至少从古希腊人的思想开始就被认为是人类存在的组成部分，但在20世纪，各种大陆哲学家再次突出了死亡的概念，对死亡提出了不同的解释(海德格尔1927年，L·维纳斯1992，德里达1993)。在这一背景下，汉娜·阿伦特(1958)提出了“天生”的另一种范式。她从“主动性”的角度来解释出生的意义，关注人类存在的肉体和多元现实。阿伦特提出的转变为一种新的女权主义哲学思潮铺平了道路，该思潮集中于对性别、出生和母性概念的分析，最显著的是在卡瓦罗、伊里加雷、克里斯特娃、鲁迪克和杜登的作品中。我的研究旨在调查为什么尽管这些女权主义立场取得了成功，但仍然有拒绝将出生和母性作为哲学范畴的倾向。这种拒绝与20世纪哲学中死亡学的回归以及人类不加批判的性别分化有什么关系？出生和孕育的范畴可能会对西方哲学传统构成什么挑战？这项研究将通过将出生和孕育解释为纯粹的自然事件、受时间限制并与女性气质的非批判性视野联系在一起，而是作为真实的存在可能性，提升到哲学范畴来解决这些问题。它将调查出生和以母体为导向的哲学思想如何挑战传统的哲学和政治范畴，如自治、自由和主权的概念，并将发展一种哲学方法，使我们能够关注人类状况的相互依存和关系。

The aim of my project is to contest the "thanatological" turn in twentieth-century European philosophy by rethinking "birth" and "maternity" as philosophical categories. I propose to do this by developing Hannah Arendt's notion of natality with further resources from contemporary feminist thought.Mortality has been conceived as a constitutive part of human existence since at least the thought of the ancient Greeks but in the twentieth century various continental philosophers foregrounded it again, offering different interpretations of death (Heidegger 1927, Lévinas 1992, Derrida 1993). In this context Hannah Arendt (1958) proposes the alternative paradigm of 'natality'. She interprets the meaning of birth in terms of 'initiative', attending to the bodily and plural reality of human existence. Arendt's proposed shift paved the way for a new feminist philosophical current concentrating on the analysis of the notions of gender, birth and maternity, most notably in the work of Cavarero, Irigaray, Kristeva, Ruddick and Duden.My research aims to investigate why, despite the success of these feminist positions, there is still a tendency to reject birth and maternity as philosophical categories. How is this rejection connected to the return of thanatology in twentieth century philosophy and with an uncritical sexual differentiation of humankind? What challenge may the categories of birth and maternity pose to the Western philosophical tradition?This research will address these questions by interpreting birth and maternity not as mere natural events, restricted in time and linked to an uncritical vision of femininity, but as authentic existential possibilities, to be elevated to philosophical categories. It will investigate how birth and maternally-oriented philosophical thought challenge traditional philosophical and political categories, such as the notions of autonomy, freedom, and sovereignty and will develop a philosophical approach that allows us to focus on the interdependence and the relationality of the human condition.