Amor Mundi

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.   

The Triumph of Cynicism

Roger Berkowitz
Jane 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...

Intuitionist Mathematics and Common Sense

Roger Berkowitz
Hannah 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...

What We Are Reading:
Small Things

Samantha Hill
In 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.

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.

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.”

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.

The Threat to the Republic

By Roger Berkowitz
In 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.

The Loss of the Spoken Word and Distinction in the age of COVID-19

Hannah Arendt Center member Scott McLain writes this week's member submission.