Articles

Caving In

Roger Berkowitz
Francine Prose writes about Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to pull the publication of her new book in response to protests from Ukrainian activists. The offense in Gilbert’s book is simply that it is set in Russian, albeit Stalinist Russia. These activists who take offense have not read Gilbert’s book. They simply believe that since the book is set in Russia, it will be offensive and do harm to Ukrainians. Prose takes issue with this worry and Gilbert’s decision to cave-in to such pressure.

Normalizing Corruption And Its Limits

Roger Berkowitz
Why is the first-ever indictment of a former President being met with such equanimity from so many in the Republicans Party? Of course some like former governor Chris Christie have rightly condemned the President’s spoiled-child-I’m-above-the-law act and defended the prosecution. But the nihilistic wing of the Republican Party openly suggests that violence may be the appropriate response to Justice Department overreach. And even the usually more critical Wall St. Journal—which acknowledges that “Republicans deserve a more competent champion with better character than Mr. Trump”— headlines its lead editorial “A Destructive Trump Indictment”.

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? 
 

The Banality at Cannes

Roger Berkowitz
Apparently Hannah Arendt was on everyone’s lips this year at the Cannes film festival. Alissa Wilkinson does a nice job of parsing the allusions to Arendt. 

Living Amidst the Shadows

Roger Berkowitz
Suzy Hansen writes about the photographs and the journey of Turkish photographer Emin Özmen as he has documented Turkey’s descent from a democracy on the cusp of joining the European Union to an autocracy. Hansen collaborates with Özmen whose haunting photographs make palpable sense of powerlessness in Erdogan’s Turkey.

The Great Acceleration
 

Roger Berkowitz
All around us are warnings about the consequences of generative AI for our jobs, our democracy, and our humanity. And all around us is excitement for the possibilities that generative AI will make us richer, more informed, safer, and better. The transformation of human society will be intense, swift, and powerful. And we all need guides to help us through.  Walter Russell Mead does an excellent job of sketching out the challenges we face, contextualizing it in history, and posing questions for the present.

Can We Stop Ourselves

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of AI research, has recently quit his job at Google to spread the word of his fears that AI will be used in ways that will do fantastic harm. “It is hard to see,” he says, “how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” 

A Small Boat Across the Mediterranean

Roger Berkowitz
I came across this interview by Jeevika Verma with Marilyn Hacker, one of my favorite poets who for some reason I haven’t read in a long while. Verma asks Hacker about her use of form, how “discipline and intimacy work together in a way that might feel contradictory at first but provides a clear path toward open communication.” And then she and Hacker talk about the power of form to convey volatile movements and emotions.

Our Crisis of Worldly Courage

The biggest obstacle to political action today, Arendt saw, is that we increasingly don’t have ideals for which we are willing to fight. We no longer know What We Are Fighting For. Maurits de Jongh argues that the war in Ukraine has laid bare our uncertainty about those common values that might inspire us to collective action. And he worries that as the world hurdles towards confrontations amongst nuclear powers, the courage needed to act politically may be lacking.