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On Truth and Power
I’m grading papers for a new seminar I taught this past semester on Truth and Politics. It was one of the most exciting courses I’ve taught in a few years, with simply fantastic students who brought incredible passion and curiosity to perhaps the burning question of our moment. Structured around a close reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s short but brilliant “How The True World Became a Fable," the students came to understand what Nietzsche means when he says that “truth is a lie,” or “truth is a woman,” or “truth is a fable.” Plato invented truth because of a distrust of opinion. Confronted with the trial and death of Socrates, Plato was convinced that political opinion in a democracy was dangerous, unstable, and irrational. What was needed was training of the best, those able to see beyond the shadows and deceptions of the human world, those who could step out of the cave of human affairs and focus their attention on the supersensual truths of the ideas. These philosophers claimed to know the rational truth, and from this they claimed the right to rule as philosopher kings. The question of the course became simply: If truth is a lie, is it a lie we should cherish and protect?06-04-2023
Articles
Judgment and the Public world
Roger BerkowitzSeyla Benhabib reviews a series of new books on Hannah Arendt and in the process offers a strong interpretation of Arendt’s thinking about Judgment. As we prepare to read Hannah Arendt’s writings on judgment in the Virtual Reading Group, Benhabib’s account rightly sees judgment as an essential political activity of building a shared world.
02-06-2022
The 2020 Election
Roger BerkowitzThe Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) has issued what the Wall Street Journal calls the best report on what really happened in the 2020 elections.
01-30-2022
The Right Danger
Roger BerkowitzJonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner argue that the real danger to American Constitutional democracy comes from the failure of conservatives to stand up to former President Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine a presidential election.
01-22-2022
Against Memory
Roger BerkowitzNicolas Tenzer looks at attempts to destroy “Memorial,” a group founded by the dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov that sought to expose Stalin’s crimes.
01-22-2022
The Political Rise of the Family Business
Roger BerkowitzMelinda Cooper argues that the Trump Republican Party represents the "insurrection of one form of capitalism against another: the private, unincorporated, and family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, and shareholder-owned.”
01-22-2022
Why A Mugging?
Roger BerkowitzAdam Shatz, who has taught with me at Bard and spoken at Arendt Center Conferences and events, writes about his being assaulted, beaten up, and mugged in New York last month.
01-16-2022
Power to the Politicians
Roger BerkowitzThe voting reform agenda seems dead in Congress. One can argue about the quality of the two bills being proposed. And one can argue about the filibuster. Lawrence Lessig reminds us that the real problem is the untethered pursuit of partisan political power that has taken over our political system.
01-16-2022
The Multiracial Anti-Woke Candidate
Roger BerkowitzSimon van Zuylen-Wood has a profile of J.D. Vance that looks beyond the diatribes and tries to understand Vance’s evolution and his popular appeal. He argues that Vance represents an “alienated worldview” that appeals not only to disaffected white voters, but increasingly to multiracial working-class voters.
01-09-2022
American Values
Roger BerkowitzSabrina Tavernise does a deep dive into the way the pandemic has intensified a larger fight over what it means to be an American.
01-09-2022