Amor Mundi

The Greatest Achievement: Arendt and Art

Hannah Arendt isn’t known for writing about art. But that doesn’t mean she has nothing to say about it. Far from it.

The Friendship Recession

Addie Page describes her search for new friends amidst what is increasingly being seen as a crisis of friendship.

Our Friend/Enemy Politics

Roger Berkowitz
In my seminar on “Truth and Politics” this semester we are grappling with the pure weaponization of claims to truthfulness and lying. And this this weekend I’m at colloquium on federalism where one theme is how federalism is embraced by whichever party or group doesn’t control political power. Principled ideas of governance and politics are fully sacrificed to the overriding goal of winning. These ideas are grounded in a larger nihilist worldview, and one thinker who understood the full implications of nihilist politics was Carl Schmitt. 

Waking Up

Roger Berkowitz
Vincent Lloyd was teaching a seminar at the Telluride Association on “Race and the Limits of Law in America.” By the end of the seminar, his students had either been expelled for being racists or had accused him of being racist and walked out of the class. Lloyd, who says he has been suspicious of the critique of woke movements, came to see the behavior of the students not as a religion, but rather as a cult.

Theory Has Deconstructed Objectivity

Mark Goldblatt argues that academia is heading for a showdown between the STEM fields that believe in objectivity and the social sciences and the humanities that do not. But Goldblatt’s real concern should be the loss of impartiality in the humanities and social sciences, not the loss of objectivity. 

Impartiality and Objectivity 

Roger Berkowitz
Hannah Arendt reminded us of the importance of impartiality in history, journalism, and scholarship. For Arendt, every selection of facts is, as a selection, partial. Bret Stephens writes about the crisis of confidence in journalism.

The Stranglehold of Relevance

Roger Berkowitz
Robert Boyers interviews Jed Perl about the place of freedom and authority in art.

The Lost Power of the Press

Roger Berkowitz
Louis Menand asks what happened to the power of the press? He argues that the culprit is simple: the breakdown of a white, liberal, internationalist mainstream ideology that united the government and the press for decades in the 20th century.

Making the Empire More Colorful

Roger Berkowitz
In Harpers last week, Christopher Beah talks to Patrick J. Deneen, Francis Fukuyama, Deirdre Nansen McClosky, and Cornell West about Liberalism and whether it is worth saving.