Amor Mundi

The Need for Analogy 

Peter E. Gordon writes a defense of historical analogy in the New York Review of Books. Gordon situates his considered argument against the backdrop of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum issuing a blanket statement, refusing historical comparison to the Holocaust in response to Alexandra Ocasio Cortez calling the detention camps on the U.S. boarder “concentration camps” last year. — Samantha Hill

“It Doesn’t Really Matter”

Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood argue that empirical studies show that when Americans of both parties are confronted with corrections to factual misstatements, they overwhelmingly change their opinion of the facts.  — Roger Berkowitz

Hannah Arendt and World War I: On statelessness and the rise of totalitarian regimes

By Jana Marlene Mader
Behind this narrative of the “dangerous migrant” is a disinformation machine that cultivates the powerful climate of anti-immigration. Unlike the scenario 100 years ago, when nationalism was closely linked to the trial of strength between great powers, we can see a trend that is an irony in itself: the globalisation of nationalism. The target audience in this scenario is the “dissatisfied” citizen..

HAC Podcast Episode 3: Twilight of the Gods, with Antonia Grunenberg

A talk delivered at the Hannah Arendt Center, November 25, 2019, on Walter Benjamin‘s project of founding a political metaphysics in secular times – and Hannah Arendt‘s answer

Everything is Fragile: Reading Arendt in the Anthropocene

John D. Macready, professor of philosophy at Collin College, offers this week's Quote of the Week.
This essay was originally published in Amor Mundi on July 18, 2019.

Democracy in Name Only

From our 2017 annual conference, Madeleine Rosen asks “Has representative democracy failed?”

Racism and Antisemitism

The 2019 Hannah Arendt Center Annual Conference “Racism and Antisemitism” began with Arendt’s insight that antisemitism is a form of racism in that both are ideologies of supremacy and inferiority based on racial difference. Enjoy this video about the conference made by Bard Student and Arendt Center Fellow Jonathan Fine.

The Unquestioned Optimism of Futurists

This week, we are republishing an essay from Nikita Nelin, originally published in February, 2019.

“How is possible to learn something new from history?”[1]

By Denisse Mendoza Jaimes
It is well-known that Hannah Arendt was a German Jewish political theorist who dedicated her life to understanding the meaning of political action in human life. During the interview “Zur person” with Günther Gaus, Arendt points out that her interest in history and politics started in 1933. She took part as a political actor recompiling antisemitic statements...