Amor Mundi

Heidegger's Black Notebooks

A discussion with Peter Trawny and Roger Berkowitz

Martin Heidegger and Günther Anders on Technology: On Ray Kurzweil, Fritz Lang, and Transhumanism

By Babette Babich

All mere chasing after the future so as to work out a picture of it through calculation in order to extend what is present and half thought into what, now veiled, is yet to come, itself still moves within the prevailing attitude belonging to technological calculating representation.

- Martin Heidegger, The Turning

Naive Thinking on Race

Roger Berkowitz
Interviewing Thomas Chatterton Williams, Otis Houston asks Chatterton Williams about a line from Terence “I am human; nothing human is alien to me.” Isn’t that naive, Houston asks? Chatterton Williams responds in praise of a certain naivete.

When YouTube Overtakes Life

By Roger Berkowitz
Jesse Singal tells the story of Desh Amila, a Sri Lankan immigrant and Australian citizen who “has built a career out of facilitating intellectually oriented public events, often between people with serious disagreements.” Desh, as he is called, has specialized in organizing difficult conversations on topics like Islamic extremism.

Reading Arendt Now

By Samantha Hill
People often ask me, “Why Arendt?” The honest answer is that I fell in love with her writing my freshman year of college, reading The Human Condition on a brown leather sofa in the library, between the stacks.

Arendt on Marx

By Samantha Hill
Geoffrey Wildanger reviews the first volume of Hannah Arendt’s Critical Edition The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Fragmente eines Buchs, focusing on Arendt’s unfinished Marx manuscript.

The Virtual Reading Group

A monthly reading group focused on the written works of Hannah Arendt, led by Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center.

Who is a Whistleblower?
 

By Roger Berkowitz
Daniel Ellsberg was the quintessential whistleblower. He was an expert insider who had evidence of government misconduct. After attempts to expose the misconduct to his superiors, he offered it to journalists. Ellsberg’s whistleblowing led to the publication of “The Pentagon Papers,” which became the raw material for one of Hannah Arendt’s prescient essays “Lying in Politics.”

The New Loyalty Oaths

By Roger Berkowitz
When I was a graduate student teaching at UC Berkeley I was asked to sign a statement that I would report people with suspicious immigration backgrounds. When I applied for professorships at certain traditionally religious schools, I was asked to swear that I would not promote abortion in my classes.