What We're Readings
Featured Article
Impartiality and Objectivity
In Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt explores the critical distinction between impartiality and objectivity, emphasizing the necessity of understanding multiple perspectives in both art and politics. Through her essays, Arendt reflects on how the dual totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust necessitate a reevaluation of our moral and political traditions, urging us to cultivate the practice of thinking without the constraints of historical norms. This book serves as an essential guide for navigating contemporary political discourse, advocating for a return to impartial judgment as a means of fostering a shared world amidst diversity.09-22-2024
What We're Readings
Our Political Crisis
Michael Lind writes that “Many Democrats claim that Republicans are destroying the republic. Many Republicans claim the reverse. They are both correct.” This is not at all to equate the two sides of our political dystopia, but it is to recognize that there is a feeling of disempowerment and Armageddon on across the political divide. Lind argues that this premonition of imminent destruction maps onto five crises facing the American Republic.01-14-2021
Hope is Necessary
Ann Heberlein has written a new biography of Hannah Arendt, translated from the Swedish as, “On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt.” Anand Giridharadas says that he knew he had to interview Heberlein “when I read these words about what she believes we today can learn from Arendt: “to love the world so much that we think change is possible.”01-14-2021
Change Happens
Neil Roberts called his recently-turned 18 year-old goddaughter after the polls closed in Georgia on Tuesday to congratulate her for voting. One day later, chaos broke out in our nation’s capital. Roberts asks, what he should say now to his goddaughter. 01-09-2021
Trump’s Conspiritualist Army
Jules Evans has written an important and well-researched essay on Jake Agnelli, the self-initiated QAnon Shaman who was so prominent in the mobbing of the Capitol building on Wednesday, January 6th. You’ll recognize Agnelli, who wore a Racoon hat with horns, no shirt, carried an American flag and sported prodigious tattoos on his shirtless torso.01-09-2021
What We're Reading: Nihilism
Nolen Gertz writes that if we are going to talk meaningfully about our nihilistic age, we should understand what nihilism really means. And he begins, appropriately enough, with Hannah Arendt.01-07-2021