To the extent that risk is experienced as omnipresent, there are only three possible reactions: denial , apathy or transformation . The first is largely inscribed in modern culture, the second resembles post-modern nihilism, the third is the ‘cosmopolitan moment’ of world risk society. And that is what I am going to talk about. What is meant by that may be explained with reference to Hannah Arendt. The existential shock of danger - therein lies the fundamental ambivalence of global risks - opens up unintentionally (and often also unseen and unutilized) the (mis)fortune of a possible new beginning (which is no cause for false sentimentality). How to live in the shadow of global risks? How to live, when old certainties are shattered or are now revealed as lies? Arendt’s answer anticipates the irony of risk. The expectation of the unexpected requires that the self-evident is no longer taken as self-evident. The shock of danger is a call for a new beginning. Where there is a new beginning, action is possible. Human beings enter into relations across borders. This common activity by strangers across borders means freedom. All freedom is contained in this ability to begin.