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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
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Martin Heidegger and Günther Anders on Technology: On Ray Kurzweil, Fritz Lang, and Transhumanism
By Babette BabichAll mere chasing after the future so as to work out a picture of it through calculation in order to extend what is present and half thought into what, now veiled, is yet to come, itself still moves within the prevailing attitude belonging to technological calculating representation.
- Martin Heidegger, The Turning
05-09-2019
Naive Thinking on Race
Roger BerkowitzInterviewing Thomas Chatterton Williams, Otis Houston asks Chatterton Williams about a line from Terence “I am human; nothing human is alien to me.” Isn’t that naive, Houston asks? Chatterton Williams responds in praise of a certain naivete.
05-05-2019
When YouTube Overtakes Life
By Roger BerkowitzJesse Singal tells the story of Desh Amila, a Sri Lankan immigrant and Australian citizen who “has built a career out of facilitating intellectually oriented public events, often between people with serious disagreements.” Desh, as he is called, has specialized in organizing difficult conversations on topics like Islamic extremism.
05-05-2019
Reading Arendt Now
By Samantha HillPeople often ask me, “Why Arendt?” The honest answer is that I fell in love with her writing my freshman year of college, reading The Human Condition on a brown leather sofa in the library, between the stacks.
05-05-2019
Arendt on Marx
By Samantha HillGeoffrey Wildanger reviews the first volume of Hannah Arendt’s Critical Edition The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Fragmente eines Buchs, focusing on Arendt’s unfinished Marx manuscript.
05-02-2019
The Virtual Reading Group
A monthly reading group focused on the written works of Hannah Arendt, led by Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center.05-02-2019
University in Exile
By Roger BerkowitzSamantha Hill reviews a new book by Judith Friedlander about the history of the New School for Social Research and the “University in Exile” that saved so many European intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt. (free registration required)
04-28-2019
Who is a Whistleblower?
By Roger BerkowitzDaniel Ellsberg was the quintessential whistleblower. He was an expert insider who had evidence of government misconduct. After attempts to expose the misconduct to his superiors, he offered it to journalists. Ellsberg’s whistleblowing led to the publication of “The Pentagon Papers,” which became the raw material for one of Hannah Arendt’s prescient essays “Lying in Politics.”
04-28-2019
The New Loyalty Oaths
By Roger BerkowitzWhen I was a graduate student teaching at UC Berkeley I was asked to sign a statement that I would report people with suspicious immigration backgrounds. When I applied for professorships at certain traditionally religious schools, I was asked to swear that I would not promote abortion in my classes.
04-28-2019