Amor Mundi

What We Are Reading:
The Outrage Mob

Roger Berkowitz
Pamela Paresky, Jonathan Haidt, Nadine Strossen, and Steven Pinker write about the outrage mob that has forced institutions like the New York Times to run scared and censor the newspaper in response to public pressure.

The Gift of Community
 

Roger Berkowitz

Philanthropy increasingly has a bad name in some circles these days. And there are real worries about the retreat of government being replaced by wealthy donors who then have an outsized impact on our public world. But it is also important to recall Aristotle’s insight that a political community depends upon virtues, including what he calls the virtue of liberality. It is meaningful, Aristotle writes, when wealthy citizens build shrines to the graces in public places...

Get Back to Laboring

Roger Berkowitz
Governments and businesses are telling people to get back to work. Lyndsey Stonebridge notes that what what they really are saying is to get back to the business of laboring. The distinction between work and labor is central to Hannah Arendt’s thinking about the human condition.

Amor Mundi Podcast, Episode 1: Martin Gurri

The Hannah Arendt Center presents the Amor Mundi Podcast. This episode, Roger Berkowitz talks with Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.

Communities of Trust

Roger Berkowitz
In a Senate hearing this week, Senator Rand Paul called for humility and warned that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not the “end all” in predicting the course of the Coronavirus. In response, Dr. Fauci reminded Senator Paul—who is also a doctor—that he had never made himself to be an “end all.” “I am a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence...

Podcast in Print: Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies

A transcript of the open remarks from the Amor Mundi Podcast episode 10: “Revitalizing Democracy Through Citizen Assemblies.” It features the Arendt Center’s founder and director, Roger Berkowitz, and Jonas Kunz, cofounder of the Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy through Sortition giving a talk and leading a discussion over Zoom.

Federalism

Roger Berkowitz
As the President vacillates between claiming absolute powers and empowering the states, there is a renewed interest in the American principle of federalism. The appeal to the principle of federalism and the multiplication of powers throughout the United States Constitutional system is precisely the kind of thinking Hannah Arendt celebrated as the true innovation of the United States Constitution.

Loneliness and the Loss of the Common World

Roger Berkowitz
Until recently, I had not left my apartment for 33 days. I did not touch another human being—not even the members of my family with whom I live—for  even longer. The virus has been mild in my case. It is nearly gone. Physically, I am fine. I am one of the lucky ones; I never had to make a decision whether to go to a hospital, alone, not knowing whether I would see family and friends ever again.

What We Are Reading:
Viral Extremities

Roger Berkowitz
Kristian Blickle of the Federal Reserve Board of New York has published a working paper, “Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933.” As described by Quint Forgey, Blickle’s paper “concludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influenza pandemic “profoundly shaped German society” in subsequent years and contributed to the strengthening of the Nazi Party.”