Featured
Featured Article
When Government Works Its Magic
The article discusses the vital role of civil servants in a functioning democracy, emphasizing that politics is about collective action for a common purpose. It critiques the poor treatment and recognition of public officials, which undermines meaningful political life. The Sammie awards, designed to honor exceptional federal employees, are presented as a way to address this problem by highlighting the critical contributions of public servants, often overlooked despite their role in solving significant challenges.09-08-2024
Featured
The Threat to the Republic
By Roger BerkowitzIn March, 2017, I published an essay “Why Arendt Matters” about the newly inaugurated President Trump. I wrote that, “Common sense insists that we not abandon reality and imagine that the United States is experiencing totalitarianism.” I argued that while the President was leading a mass movement, and that while mass movements are at the core of totalitarian domination, it is also the case that not all mass movements are totalitarian.
04-09-2020
In Memoriam: Dora Amelan
We at the Hannah Arendt Center mourn the death of Dora Amelan (1920-2020). Dora was a remarkable French Jewish woman who worked with the Children’s Aid Society in the French internment camps during WWII, saving many children and adults. Dora was the mother of Bjorn Amelan and mother-in-law to his partner Bill T. Jones, who has long collaborated with the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College. Dora passed away this week in Paris, from complications associated with Covid-19.04-03-2020
The Erosion of the Common World
Roger BerkowitzIt has become common sense that President Trump lies. Once again there are countless articles and Twitter feeds and video compilations showing that the President has lied, stated falsehoods, and denied having said what he said. And yet through it all, the President’s popularity rating is soaring.
04-02-2020
Hannah Arendt and the 20th Century
By Roger BerkowitzThe German Museum of History prepared a wonderful new exhibition on Hannah Arendt that was supposed to have its opening this week.
03-28-2020
A Time For Reading and Falling in Love With Hannah Arendt
By Roger BerkowitzIn the recent podcast on Arendt, Freedom, and Protest on the Political Theory Podcast, host Toby Buckle asks Roger Berkowitz why Hannah Arendt is so loved today. One answer comes from Jeremy Clarke who writes about his love affair with Hannah Arendt’s thinking, which he first encountered on a BBC radio show In Our Time.
03-24-2020
Bare LIfe and the Animal Laborans
By Roger BerkowitzIn the last Amor Mundi Newsletter we linked to an essay by Giorgio Agamben where he embraced a rightly discredited theory that the Corona Virus was not worse than the flu, and that governments were hyping the dangers of the virus in order to justify repression and discipline. Agamben has since recognized his mistake and has now published a follow up called “Clarifications.”
03-21-2020
When Philosophers Are Blinded By Theory
By Roger BerkowitzThe European Journal of Psychoanalysis has published a symposium “Coronavirus and Philosophers.” It begins with an excerpt from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish about the quarantine of a town during the plague in the 17th century.
03-18-2020
Review: Arendt on the Political
David Arndt’s Arendt on the Political is an account of Hannah Arendt’s theory of politics. Instead of understanding politics from a philosophical perspective, we should choose to understand what the “nontheoretical forms of thought that prevail in politics,” tell us. He asks us to largely bracket political theorizing and come down from the realm of philosophy to consider the world of action.03-13-2020
Political Hobbyism
By Roger BerkowitzEitan Hersh argues that college-educated voters only think they are engaged in politics, while what “they are doing is no closer to engaging in politics than watching SportsCenter is to playing football.” When college-educated voters donate online, follow the polls, and become fans of a candidate, they are less doing politics than participating in a spectator sport as spectators. And these hobbyists, Hersh writes, are hurting American politics.
03-11-2020