Amor Mundi

What We're Reading: The History of Antisemitism

By Samantha Hill
Judith Butler reviewed Bari Weiss’s new book How to Fight Anti-Semitism for Jewish Currents. Butler’s book review is notable for a couple of reasons and worth reading whether one finds oneself politically closer to Butler or Weiss. The primary reason being: It’s rare to read a real book review these days that systematically works through the arguments in a text. Butler, a pro-BDS supporter, argues that Weiss lacks an historical understanding of antisemitism.

Citizenship and Civil Disobedience: Reflections on Civil War and Civil Disobedience

by Roger Berkowitz
In the years leading up to the Civil War, there were more than seventy violent clashes between Representatives and Senators in Congress. In her book Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and Road to Civil War Joanna Freeman tells a story of a raucous antebellum Congress replete with bullying, dueling, and fistfights.¹ Even amidst the bitter animosity that pervades Washington, D.C., in the era of President Donald Trump, it takes some effort to imagine our elected officials...

In the Archive with Hannah Arendt

By Samantha Hill
When Hannah Arendt arrived at the German Literature Archive in Marbach Germany in June 1975 to organize Karl Jasper’s papers, she stood up in the cafeteria and began reciting Friedrich Schiller by heart. She was fond of “Das Mädchen aus der Fremde”, but this is pure speculation. As Arendt said to Günter Gaus in her last interview, she carried German poems around in her hinterkopf. I’d wager she knew more than one.

Samantha Hill on Hannah Arendt's Relevance at this moment

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 brought new readers to Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (published in 1951). Pete and I talk to Samantha Hill, assistant director of Bard College's Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, about the insights Arendt's thought offers us today.

Reimagining Human Health

The health concerns of the 21st century have shifted since the discovery of antibiotics in the 1920s. Over the last century, infectious diseases faded from view as the greatest threat to human health. During the same period, chronic inflammatory and noncommunicable diseases like asthma, Alzheimer’s, lupus, arthritis, Crohn’s, IBD, celiac disease, obesity, and others have increased exponentially...

Jaspers and Heinrich Blücher’s Common Course 

By Roger Berkowitz
As World War II came to an end, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers republished a revised edition of his 1923 book The Idea of the University. Jaspers saw universities as essential to the maintenance of a vibrant democracy. He was worried that the universities in Germany had become overly specialized and technical and that they had lost their true calling as institutions dedicated to communication and truth.

The New Progressivism

By Roger Berkowitz
George Packer has a long and thoughtful essay about culture wars, meritocracy, and our children. The structure of the essay follows Packer and his wife as they navigate the New York City public and private schools. They pull their son out of an expensive private school to send him to a public school that is 38% white, 29% black, 24% Latino, and 7% Asian, closely representative of the city’s population. But the school is less academically rich than the private school...

What We're Reading: Wendell Berry

Jedediah Britton-Purdy chronicles the life and work of Wendell Berry in The Nation. Berry’s writing, which won him a National Humanities Medal in 2011, has now been gathered in two volumes. The focus of Berry’s writing which reflects his agricultural lifestyle, has always spoken to larger political issues like environmentalism, violence, and economic inequality.

Swift as Thought