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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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Article

Simone Weil on War and Justice

Roger Berkowitz
The Jewish born Christian philosopher Simone Weil wrote: “Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how to respect it, is capable of love and justice.” What war teaches, Weil argues, is the experience of utter misery, the reduction of man to a mere thing, a plaything of fate.

03-06-2022

Article

The First TikTok War

Tobias Hess
The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia marks not just a seismic change in the global geopolitical order, but a historiographical shift in how citizens take in the documentation of war.

03-06-2022

Article, Featured

Russia Invades Ukraine

Roger Berkowitz
Hannah Arendt wrote about war, genocide, and totalitarianism. Her mantra was to look reality squarely in the face and seek to understand it and to resist it. But first to understand it. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is a human tragedy. It is also a geopolitical earthquake that threatens to transform the world in which we live.

02-27-2022

What we are listening to: Public Choice Theory

Ezra Klein interviews the economist Alex Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University.

02-19-2022

Article

In Memoriam, P.J. O’Rourke

Roger Berkowitz
P.J. O’Rourke died this week. His satirical essays on American democracy are essential reading, including my favorite “At Home in the Parliament of Whores”—a send up of a local town hall meeting in the fictional town of Blaterboro, loosely based on O’Rourke’s home in New Hampshire.

02-19-2022

Article

Demographics Is Not Destiny

Roger Berkowitz
It is a widespread faith amongst many on the left that the coming majority minority population will lead to increasingly left-wing politics. Mickey Kaus offers 14 reasons why this is wrong and dangerous.

02-19-2022

Featured

Virtuals, Intellectuals, and The New Ideological Divide

Roger Berkowitz
N.S. Lyons considers the Trucker protests in Canada now spreading around the world and argues that the protests force us to consider the divide between what he calls the physicals and the virtuals.

02-19-2022

Article

The N-Word

Roger Berkowitz
When a video went viral of Joe Rogan using the N-word over 20 times in the past 12 years, the effort to cancel him and have his podcast removed from Spotify hit a wall.

02-13-2022

Featured

Leviathan Wakes

Roger Berkowitz
The pseudonymous N.S. Lyons provides 20 reasons why the woke revolution, for want of a better term, has a long way to run.

02-13-2022