Featured Article
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
All Categories
The Thrill of Democracy
This is episode 7,”The Thrill of Democracy.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz in conversation with Olivia Guaraldo, a political thinker, Professor of Political Thought, and Director of the Hannah Arendt Center at the University of Verona in Italy.04-20-2020
The Triumph of Cynicism
Roger BerkowitzJane Mayer’s profile of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offers essential political insight into our times. One of the mysteries of the phenomenon that is Donald Trump is his capacity to lead a successful mass political movement without any obvious political beliefs or ideology. President Trump seems to have loyalty to few causes outside of himself and his own interests. What President Trump cares about, above all, is winning...
04-16-2020
Intuitionist Mathematics and Common Sense
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt worried greatly about the rise of science. She took Niels Bohr seriously when he argued that “causality, determinism, and necessity of laws belonged to the categories of ‘our necessarily prejudiced conceptual frame’.” The new physics “defies description in terms of the ‘prejudices’ of the human mind[and] defies description in every conceivable way of human language.” Which is one reason why Albert Einstein...
04-16-2020
What We Are Reading:
Small Things
Samantha HillIn The Point’s “Quarantine Journal” Dawn Herrera Helphand reflects upon Hannah Arendt’s observation of the “infectious charm and petit Bonheur of the French way of life.” Herrera Helphand argues that Arendt’s reflection is a critique of petit bourgeois materialism to make the case against “coziness” in late capitalism.
04-16-2020
Amor Mundi Podcast Special Series, Thinking the Plague: Thinking in Dark Times
This is episode 6,”Thinking in Dark Times.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz and Samantha Hill, Assistant Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, in a wide-ranging conversation about thinking during the time of the plague.04-16-2020
Amor Mundi Podcast Special Series,Thinking the Plague: Looking in the Mirror
This is episode 5,” Looking In the Mirror.” It features the Arendt Center's Founder and Director Roger Berkowitz in conversation with Jerome Kohn, a political thinker, the literary executor for Hannah Arendt, and the editor of many volumes of Arendt’s posthumous works including “Thinking Without a Bannister,” “The Jewish Writings,” “Essays in Understanding,” and Responsibility and Judgment.”04-14-2020
Podcast: Living with Honor, part of our special series: Thinking the Plague
Roger Berkowitz speaks with Uday Mehta, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York.04-09-2020
Isolation and Loneliness
Dhruv Khullar writes about the loneliness and solidarity of treating the coronavirus in New York for the New Yorker magazine. Looking at patient’s experiences of the ICU and feelings of isolation, Khullar talks about how doctors are managing the pandemic.04-09-2020
The Threat to the Republic
By Roger BerkowitzIn March, 2017, I published an essay “Why Arendt Matters” about the newly inaugurated President Trump. I wrote that, “Common sense insists that we not abandon reality and imagine that the United States is experiencing totalitarianism.” I argued that while the President was leading a mass movement, and that while mass movements are at the core of totalitarian domination, it is also the case that not all mass movements are totalitarian.
04-09-2020