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Amor Mundi

The weekly newsletter of the Hannah Arendt Center
What is most difficult, writes Arendt, is to love the world as it is. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection, but the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is. The opinions expressed in essays on our site are those of their authors.

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About

About

Amor Mundi (for love of the world) is an exploration of Arendtian topics delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. This includes deep dives into the works of Hannah Arendt and the implications of her ideas on the world today. We feature varied, nuanced, and often opposing viewpoints in this non-partisan publication, and brave and provocative ideas that will help you (re)discover the joy of deep thinking and caring about the world.

When you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll also receive first-hand updates on what we’re doing at HAC (conferences, events, workshops, etc.), an Arendt Quote of the Week with in-depth analysis from Arendt scholars from around the world, and highlights of the work being done on campus by our Student Fellows. Be among the first to know about special offers from our partners and upcoming events!

We've been publishing weekly essays here on our website since 2010, and are now transitioning to the publication platform Medium. You can still read for free with links from our email each Sunday! But now you can highlight sections and comment, too!

Browse our Library of Amor Essays on Medium
 

A note to new Medium users: if you see an offer pop-up, just simply X out to close and continue reading. You can also Follow HAC on Medium and Subscribe to our publications, to receive additional notifications so you don't miss an essay. 

  • Image for The Radical Politics of Joy
    The Radical Politics of Joy
    "Is Joy really what Arendt wants us to be talking about, amidst the most racist, cruel, and criminal American administration since the Civil Rights era?" So asked one of my favorite former students, protesting the theme of this year's Hannah Arendt Center Conference: JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times.

    READ MORE
  • Image for Civil Disobedience and the Spirit of American Democracy
    Civil Disobedience and the Spirit of American Democracy
    Hannah Arendt wrote that, “Dissent implies consent, and is the hallmark of free government.” We are at a moment when dissent is required if we are to preserve our freedoms.

    READ MORE
  • Image for Temptations of Tyranny
    Temptations of Tyranny
    “If this isn’t tyranny, what is?” So asks Rod Dreher, one of President Trump’s most steadfast intellectual supporters, now increasingly alarmed by the President’s abuses of power.

    READ MORE
  • Image for An Open Letter To My Friends Who Signed “Philosophy for Palestine”
    An Open Letter To My Friends Who Signed “Philosophy for Palestine”
    These are dark times as multiple crises are erupting around the world while talk of a global conflagration is heard in many circles. These are also times that try human relationships, friendships, and alliances.

    READ MORE
Featured Article

Temptations of Tyranny

Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.
04-27-2025

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Resist Orthodoxy

Roger Berkowitz
My daughter graduated high school and at her ceremony, one of the speakers talked about the importance of stories and storytelling. Any event becomes meaningful when and if we tell a story about it. This does not mean that “I” am in full control of my story, that the world revolves around me and my story. Rather, it means, that the stories we tell, the communities we share, the lives we live and compose together weave us into tapestries of collective worlds, they give our lives meaning and insert us into a shared world. Stories can be told and re-told, yet stories are collective. They require both a teller and an audience, and the audience will again tell and retell the story, making it a collective experience. 
05-28-2023

What Is Auditing

Elaine Godfrey writes about Rob Sand, the State Auditor of Iowa. The Iowa legislature recently passed a bill limiting the auditor’s access to information.  If you want to know why, listen to Sand’s answer to an elementary school student who asked him what an auditor does. It will remind us, also, of one way to respond to the relentless attacks on truth that confound our efforts to govern ourselves.
05-21-2023
Featured

The Caretakers
Roger Berkowitz
 

The primary need totalitarianism satisfies is the need for meaning. While fantasies of national belonging are part of the populist playbook, so too is the basic desire for a strongman to take care of us. There is a deep human need to be taken care of, and liberal democratic governments are failing in that task.  Francisco Toro argues that the model populist strongman today is Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Toro looks to Bukele’s incredible popularity to help understand the underlying factors driving the populist revolution. 
05-21-2023
Article, Featured

The Great Acceleration
 

Roger Berkowitz
All around us are warnings about the consequences of generative AI for our jobs, our democracy, and our humanity. And all around us is excitement for the possibilities that generative AI will make us richer, more informed, safer, and better. The transformation of human society will be intense, swift, and powerful. And we all need guides to help us through.  Walter Russell Mead does an excellent job of sketching out the challenges we face, contextualizing it in history, and posing questions for the present.
05-14-2023
Article

A Small Boat Across the Mediterranean

Roger Berkowitz
I came across this interview by Jeevika Verma with Marilyn Hacker, one of my favorite poets who for some reason I haven’t read in a long while. Verma asks Hacker about her use of form, how “discipline and intimacy work together in a way that might feel contradictory at first but provides a clear path toward open communication.” And then she and Hacker talk about the power of form to convey volatile movements and emotions.
05-07-2023
Article

Can We Stop Ourselves

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of AI research, has recently quit his job at Google to spread the word of his fears that AI will be used in ways that will do fantastic harm. “It is hard to see,” he says, “how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” 
05-07-2023
Article

Our Spiritual Crisis

Roger Berkowitz
Francis X. Maier interviews N.S. Lyons, and asks “What are the main factors—political, cultural, technological, spiritual—in our historical moment that cause you the greatest concern?”
04-30-2023
Article, Featured

Our Crisis of Worldly Courage

The biggest obstacle to political action today, Arendt saw, is that we increasingly don’t have ideals for which we are willing to fight. We no longer know What We Are Fighting For. Maurits de Jongh argues that the war in Ukraine has laid bare our uncertainty about those common values that might inspire us to collective action. And he worries that as the world hurdles towards confrontations amongst nuclear powers, the courage needed to act politically may be lacking. 
04-30-2023
Article

A Climate Constitutionalism

Roger Berkowitz
Esmeralda Colombo turns to Hannah Arendt’s work on law, constitutionalism, and participatory democracy to argue for ways to limit state sovereignty and increase citizen participation in government through work on cli
04-23-2023
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