Amor Mundi

Autocracy and the Destruction of Language

Roger Berkowitz
Masha Gessen’s newest book argues that Donald Trump is paving the way for the end of American democracy and the rise of autocracy. Whether Gessen is right, their argument about how President Trump attacks language attacks a shared world of meaning necessary for democracy is right. Gessen founds their argument on insights from Hannah Arendt...

The Case of Michael Flynn 

Roger Berkowitz
I’ve written about the controversy over the prosecution of Michael Flynn. On the one hand, the effort by the Trump administration to drop charges against Flynn smacks of an authoritarian interference with the independent judiciary and the rule of law. On the other hand, there are questions about the original prosecution itself as an overreach by security agencies.

Why We Need Campuses

Samantha Hill
With the shift to virtual classrooms during the pandemic many are questioning the necessity of physical campuses, and speculating about the future of online learning. But these speculations are shortsighted. They overlook the importance of physical space for learning, and they move from an understanding that education is something to be bought and sold. In reality, online learning fuels inequality, and is exacerbated by economic disparity...

Hannah Arendt and the Twentieth Century

By Jonathon Catlin
In a tribute to her mentor Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt once said: “Humanity is never acquired in solitude, and never by giving one’s work to the public. It can be achieved only by one who has thrown his life and his person into the ‘venture into the public realm.’”

The Power Behind the Revolution

Roger Berkowitz
Whether George Floyd died from asphyxiation or some combination of “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression,” as the official Hennepin County autopsy has it, anyone can see that former police officer Derek Chauvin sat firmly on Mr. Floyd’s neck, left hand casually in his pocket as if bored, for over 8 minutes while three other officers calmly looked on.

To Think What We Are Doing

Roger Berkowitz
These are dark times. The hardest thing to do in dark times, writes Hannah Arendt, is to love the world. She invokes the Latin phrase Amor Mundi, For the Love of the World, to express the unspeakably difficult effort to reconcile with the world as it is while also insisting that the world must change.

What Opens?

Roger Berkowitz

Melvin Rogers argues that the protests and riots convulsing Minneapolis and the United States are about more than the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. “The anger and rage on display in Minneapolis is not only about police violence, however. It is taking place against a broad horizon of state violence, which among other things takes the form of utter disregard for the pain of black Americans.”

Power Organizing

Roger Berkowitz

In eulogizing Larry Kramer, Masha Gessen tells us that Kramer was a devoted reader of Hannah Arendt. What attracted Kramer was not simply Arendt’s fearlessness. And not only her deep support for the right and practice of civil disobedience. Kramer found in Arendt a thinker of political power. For Arendt, politics is about acting in concert with others and such collective action is the source of power.

Flynn Redux

Roger Berkowitz

In an earlier post about Michael Flynn, I linked to Matt Taibbi’s essay arguing that Flynn was mistakenly prosecuted by an overzealous FBI. Now Eli Lake has published a detailed and devastating account of the way the FBI railroaded Flynn. The importance of these stories is that the resistance to Trump continues to put its faith in the FBI and other institutions and to base its case against President Trump on the...