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Persuasion

Roger Berkowitz
At the very core of Arendt’s thinking about politics is her view that politics is about opinions and not truth. We all come to politics with opinions formed at times by prejudices and at other times by reason and judgment. Persuasion is the coin of politics but it is not always rational and often emotional and raw.

The Boss In Their Own Country

Roger Berkowitz
The reasons for the rise of ethno-nationalism are many, and include economic insecurity, an epidemic of loneliness, and the algorithmic seduction of social media. Also leading to the rise of the right is widespread distrust and even disdain for elite, liberal technocrats who have presided over rising globalization that has brought very little advantage to most working class voters.

Humanist Virtue and Constitutional Structure

Roger Berkowitz
For Arendt, the experience of freedom, of constituting and self-governing, was an essential factor in the emergence of a free political system. The great threat to freedom Arendt perceived in the United States was, first, that the U.S. Constitution did not institutionalize spaces for the practice of freedom for everyday citizens and, second, that the drive for bourgeois wealth and success tended to overwhelm the love of political action.

Taking Liberties

Roger Berkowitz
One of the perils of running the Hannah Arendt Center is that I am expected to respond to controversies that I would rather avoid. I strive to be ecumenical, to allow all sorts of readings of Arendt, not to impose my own or disqualify others. One recent essay, however, has caused quite the stir. It is the pugilistic and highly conceptual essay by Samuel Moyn that warns us to be wary of reading Arendt’s work because, he argues, she was a “Cold War liberal.”

Friendship. Politics, and Human Meaningfulness

Roger Berkowitz
In the wake of the Alpine Fellowship on Human Flourishing in Fjallnas, Sweden last week, I’ve been reading Lisa Miller’s book The Awakened Brain. Miller makes what my daughter says is an obvious argument, that mental illness and especially depression and anxiety can be prevented and also helped by having a rich spiritual and inner life. Hannah Arendt isn’t mentioned in Miller’s book, but the fundamental idea underlying Miller’s work is the Arendtian worry about the loss of meaningfulness, the absence of purpose, and the feeling of abandonment that has become widespread in the modern world.
 

The Double Weaponization of Loneliness

The existential crisis facing humanity is likely neither the devastation of the earth from global warming nor the destruction of humanity by a rogue AI. Indeed, artificial intelligence, in its promise of exponential technological advance, may change the calculus of the most apocalyptic climate change models. But what AI does threaten to do is to make ever increasing numbers of human beings economically superfluous.

Hannah Arendt Prize 2023

Roger Berkowitz
My Bard Colleague Masha Gessen has won the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking. Porter Anderson covers the announcement. 

Humanity in the Nuclear and AI Ages

Roger Berkowitz
To think how to respond to the challenge AI poses to humanity, David Nirenberg turns back and asks how the pioneers of the nuclear bomb set about to think about the future of man. J. Robert Oppenheimer helped bequeath humanity not only the nuclear bomb, but also the means to think about how to live as human beings in the nuclear age. After his work on the bomb as the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer served 20 years as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.. home to some of the world’s leading scientists, including Albert Einstein.

Digital Humanism Summit on Generative AI and Democratic Sustainability

Roger Berkowitz
I spent last week at the Digital Humanism Initiative Summit on Generative AI and Democratic Sustainability in Vienna. Over fifty scholars, computer scientists, regulators, and activists from more than 20 countries met for two full days to think together about the threat AI poses to democracy. Watch the recorded public presentation and read our provisional statement.