Amor Mundi

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 My research is concerned not only with these actions of free beings, but the way in which they have been archived.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. 

Achilles, too, is a ‘speaker of great words’

Arendt’s historical analysis of speech before the polis prefigures her more focused and forceful treatment of speech and action in Chapter V. Connecting these two sections reveals something of Arendt’s unique sensibility for interpreting historical texts and figures, as well as her deft hand at weaving historical sources into her own positions. Even if we cannot know precisely what Arendt gleaned from Phoinix, I am grateful that her footnotes offer us a way to peer over her shoulder and share in her objects of wonder.

Impartiality and Objectivity

In Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt explores the critical distinction between impartiality and objectivity, emphasizing the necessity of understanding multiple perspectives in both art and politics. Through her essays, Arendt reflects on how the dual totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust necessitate a reevaluation of our moral and political traditions, urging us to cultivate the practice of thinking without the constraints of historical norms. This book serves as an essential guide for navigating contemporary political discourse, advocating for a return to impartial judgment as a means of fostering a shared world amidst diversity.

Arendt’s Anton Schmidt

During the Second World War, Anton Schmidt, a Viennese forty-year-old reserve soldier in the Wehrmacht, did something deeply unexpected: he helped Jews, and then also the Jewish underground, intentionally and consistently, for several months, until he was arrested in January 1942 and, a few months later, executed for treason. The story of his heroic acts, which moved Arendt and the rest of the audience in the courtroom in Jerusalem so profoundly, was not wholly unknown at the time of the Eichmann trial. Arendt notes that it was already published in Yad Vashem’s Hebrew Bulletin and that, following this publication, it was also mentioned in a few Yiddish-American papers. However, it does seem to have found its way into Arendt’s report as if by accident––told in the Israeli courtroom and then commemorated by Arendt only due to the prosecution’s interest in a relatively insignificant comment Schmidt once uttered. Apparently, Schmidt had told Abba Kovner, one of the leaders of the Jewish resistance in the Vilna Ghetto, who later became a renowned poet and a leading public figure in Israel, that he had heard rumours about “a dog, called Eichmann,” who “arranges everything.”

On The Tribalism of Cosmopolitans

In his column, Ross Douthat critiques modern cosmopolitans, arguing they form a tribe of racially diverse yet intellectually and economically homogenous elites, masking their self-interest behind claims of objectivity. He contrasts them with "real cosmopolitans," who genuinely seek out and engage with unfamiliar cultures and perspectives, rather than assimilating differences into global sameness. Douthat’s essay challenges the idea that cosmopolitans are truly open-minded, suggesting instead that they exhibit tribal tendencies, avoiding those who don't share their values or worldview.