Amor Mundi

Rage and Reason: The Age of Anger

According to Pankaj Mishra in his book The Age of Anger: A History of the Present, we "find ourselves in an age of anger, with authoritarian leaders manipulating the cynicism and discontent of furious majorities." Mishra turns back to the German Romantics of the 19th century and their rebellion against enlightenment reason to argue that “we must return to the convulsions of that period in order to understand our own age of anger.” The holy wars of today recall the revolutionary messianism of the Italian nationalists who joined “political crusades in remote places, resolved on liberty or death.” As Mishra writes, “Then as now, the sense of being humiliated by arrogant and deceptive elites was widespread, cutting across national, religious and racial lines.” Hannah Arendt called this common feeling of humiliation and anger “negative solidarity” and Arendt’s insight is “rendered more claustrophobic by digital communications.” 

Taking Sex Seriously

Roger Berkowitz
When students at Bard first hatched the idea to bring unpopular speakers to campus under the auspices of the Arendt Center, one of the first speakers they chose was Suzanne Venker. Venker’s talk caused quite a stir. I was reminded of Venker’s arguments this week amid the hoopla around Louise Perry’s new book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

Truthtellers

Roger Berkowitz
Jonathan Rauch tells the story of Stephen Richer, the Republican Maricopa County recorder in Arizona. As country recorder, Richer is responsible for registering voters and counting votes. This has put him in the crosshairs of the MAGA movement.

Context Matters

Roger Berkowitz
One big lie today is that intent does not matter. Another is that context doesn’t matter. Harvey Silverglate, during a lecture on free speech, spoke about his colleague’s Randall Kennedy’s book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, published in 2002 and recently updated. I have taught Kennedy’s book, which is excellent, but the students at Silvergate’s lecture were unnerved at his use of the word. And the Public Issues Board at Milton Academy sent out an email to the entire student body, apologizing for Silverglate’s purported infraction.

Hypocrisy? So What?

Roger Berkowitz
N.S. Lyons shows why the claim that “it is hypocrisy” doesn’t work.

Thinking Without a Banister

Roger Berkowitz
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock gave a major foreign policy speech last week in which she began and ended her speech by referencing Hannah Arendt’s idea of “thinking without a banister.”

The Dictatorial Workplace

Zephyr Teachout paints a dystopian picture of workers monitored, oppressed, and harmed by constant tracking, monitoring, and supervision. At the end of this drive to watch workers is, in the end, the desire to fully understand workers that they can be manipulated and exploited.

The Great Replacement in Hungary

Roger Berkowitz
Hungarian President Viktor Orbán has advocated illiberal democracy. In a recent speech, however, he has gone further and explicitly embraced what is called the “great replacement” theory, the idea that ethnic Europeans are being replaced by non-whites and explicitly Arabs and Jews. An article in Politico showed that European leaders, and even some of Orbán's supporters, are worried that the Hungarian President has gone too far. 

A letter from Roger Berkowitz

This week, Italy's government fell apart and two far-right parties are favored to win upcoming elections. A war of aggression in Europe has upended basic assumptions about the liberal world order. And, in the United States, former President Trump threatens to run again for President even as a Congressional Committee has painstakingly demonstrated his efforts to illegally subvert a democratic election. It is at times like these that we must remember Hannah Arendt's warning: totalitarianism is now an ever-present possibility in our world. In such a world, Arendt argues, the fear of concentration camps and total domination invalidates all political differentiations and serves as "the politically most important yardstick for judging events in our time, namely: whether they serve totalitarian domination or not."