Amor Mundi

Meaning and the Duplicity of Nature

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt attempts to do justice to the curious relationship between human beings and nature by way of a fundamental distinction between two activities: labor and work. Put simply, labor describes the biological dimension of human life, caring for the needs of the body and all the necessities of an embodied existence. It is private and it is privative. Traditionally, those who have shouldered the collective burdens of labor have also been excluded from public life, consigned to the anonymity of the household. Work, on the other hand, describes the artificial dimension of human life. It produces a “human artifice,” removing materials from the natural environment and transforming them into an objective world to inhabit, which outlasts any individual human life.

Tribalism & Cosmopolitanism

A talk given by Roger Berkowitz at “Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism: How Can We Imagine a Pluralist Politics.” Sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

Real on Some Deeper Level

Hannah Arendt analyzed racism and antisemitism as secular ideologies that use minorities as scapegoats for societal problems, with antisemitism especially rooted in hatred toward the state. Modern antisemitism, on both the right and left, reflects ideological hatred tied to conspiracy theories, distrust of government, and narratives of state corruption, contributing to rising hostility toward marginalized groups.

Get Ready for the Arendt Center Confernce!

Roger Berkowitz, Lyndsey Stonebridge, and Uday Mehta joined WAMC Northeast Public Radio's The Roundtable to discuss some of the topics we’ll be delving into at our 16th annual fall conference on Tribalism and Cosmpolitanism this Thursday and Friday!

Between Speechless Horror and Wonder

Hannah Arendt belongs to a generation who lived through the unprecedented violence of the twentieth century, as well as the creation of the postwar international order that underpins our volatile and vulnerable world. In trying to understand the political events of her time, she cautioned against the philosophical tendency to retreat from worldly affairs. Building on the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, and Jaspers, Arendt wrote about wonder as the origin of philosophical questions in various essays and books – e.g., “Philosophy and Politics,” “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing,” The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind. However, she reflected on the relationship between horror and wonder most directly in “Concern with Politics in Recent European Political Thought.” Originally presented at the American Political Science Association in 1954, a few years after the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and her trips to Europe on behalf of the organization, Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, the essay offers insights into three areas of Arendt’s interest: philosophy, politics, and the world. 

Another Cosmopolitanism

Roger Berkowitz explores Seyla Benhabib’s critique of Hannah Arendt’s skepticism regarding the idea of an International Criminal Court. Benhabib proposes a vision of cosmopolitan justice that transcends national boundaries, asserting that global norms should apply to individuals within a worldwide civil society. This perspective highlights the ongoing tension between global cosmopolitan ideals and the preservation of local, bounded communities, advocating for a dynamic balance between the two.

Intellectuals Running the Institutions

In an interview on the Quillette Podcast, Zoe Booth speaks with Roger Berkowitz about Hannah Arendt's views on the dangers of intellectuals in politics, her skepticism of metaphysical truths, and her belief that political and moral truths emerge through conversation in a shared world rather than being objective.

Action and the materiality of story

Arendt notes that the “hero” in the Homeric sense is not the seemingly “heroic,” but the free participant, “about whom a story could be told.” My research is concerned not only with these actions of free beings, but the way in which they have been archived. The production of stories in the movement for housing justice has led to a brilliant mixture of strategies and aesthetic practices for the recording, reworking, and preservation of stories.

Many Friends Came With Us

Despite her rational, unemotional public persona, Arendt's poems—translated by Samantha Hill and Genese Grill—showcase her personal reflections, particularly on themes of friendship and farewells, influenced by her experiences fleeing Germany and other life-altering events.