OSUN, Hannah Arendt Center, and Center for Civic Engagement present:
Friendship and Politics
Thursday, October 12, 2023 – Friday, October 13, 2023
Olin Hall
Speakers
https://Roger Berkowitz
![[Roger Berkowitz]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/berk.jpeg)
His essay "Reconciling Oneself to the Impossibility of Reconciliation: Judgment and Worldliness in Hannah Arendt's Politics," has helped bring attention to the centrality of reconciliation in Hannah Arendt's work. The Arendt Center organizes an annual conference every October. Professor Berkowitz edits the Hannah Arendt Center's weekly newsletter, Amor Mundi. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The American Interest, and many other publications. Berkowitz is the 2019 recipient of the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought given by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Bremen, Germany.
Leon Botstein
![[Leon Botstein]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/botstein.png)
He is also music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the American Symphony Orchestra, artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly and writes on music and culture. VIEW MORE >>
Leon Botstein has been the President of Bard College since 1975, where he is also the Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities. He is chairperson of the board of the Central European University and chancellor of the Open Society University Network (OSUN), as well as a member of the Global Board of the Open Society Foundation.
He is also music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the American Symphony Orchestra, artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly and writes on music and culture.
He is also music director and principal conductor of The Orchestra Now (TŌN) and the American Symphony Orchestra, artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. Botstein is editor of The Musical Quarterly and writes on music and culture.
Marie Luise Knott
![[Marie Luise Knott]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Portrait0.jpg)
Science and Roman Literature (1978, University of Konstanz) she worked as an editor for 10
years. Later she worked as a literary translator from French and English and as a journalist
for various publishing houses, newspapers and radio stations. From 1995 to 2006 she was
the founder and editor in chief of the German Le Monde diplomatique. In 2010 she
completed her Ph.D. at Humboldt University: Denken im Dialog mit der Dichtung: Über
Produktionsbedingungen theoretischer Texte im 20. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Hannah
Arendts.
Since 2006 she works as curator, editor, translator and author. She has diverse teaching
experiences at Universities (FU Berlin, Universität Greifswald) and other German institutions.
Her publications include Unlearning with Hannah Arendt (2011/2015) and Exhaustion of
Modernity in 1930 (2017). She edited the letters of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem
(2010), co-edited a book on John Cage (Empty Mind, 2012) and translated several works by
Anne Carson. Her long essay 370 Riverside Drive, 730 Riverside Drive: Hannah Arendt and
Ralph Waldo Ellison (2022), won her the renowned Tractatus Prize for Philisophical Essais at
the Philosophicum Lech.
Wyatt Mason
![[Wyatt Mason]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/wyatt2.jpeg)
Uday Mehta
![[Uday Mehta]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Mehta.png)
Angel Adams Parham
![[Angel Adams Parham]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/Angel Parham Headshot.jpg)
Anne Norton
![[Anne Norton]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/anne.jpeg)
Jana Schmidt
![[Jana Schmidt]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/jana.jpeg)
Jana Mader
![[Jana Mader]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/mader.jpeg)
Thomas Chatterton Williams
![[Thomas Chatterton Williams]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/chat.png)
Thomas Wild
![[Thomas Wild]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/thomas.jpeg)
Niobe Way
![[Niobe Way]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/niobe.jpeg)
Jill Frank
![[Jill Frank]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/jill.jpeg)
Michael Weinman
![[Michael Weinman ]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/weinman.jpeg)
Location
Getting Here
![[Getting Here]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/OLIN2.jpeg)
Accomodations
![[Accomodations]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/hotel3.jpeg)
Local hotel offering a Bard Rate during the conference:
The Best Western Plus in Kingston, NY. To make reservations using the Bard discount, you must call the hotel direct at 845-338-0400 and ask for the “Bard College Discount.” (20% off) We recommend booking your accommodations as early as possible.
Parking is Free
![[Parking is Free]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/OlinParking3.jpeg)
Facebook Group
![[Facebook Group]](http://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/arendt-images/facebook.png)
This event occurs on:
Thu. October 12 – Fri. October 13
Registration will open soon!
Conference takes place in Olin Hall.
“I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective—neither the German people nor the French, not the American, nor the working class nor anything of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends.”
—Hannah Arendt To Gershom Scholem, 1963
Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of our center, was said to have a “genius for friendship.” Known as a political thinker, Arendt wrote to her friend Gershom Scholem that she could never love a state or a political people, but only her friends. For Arendt, “only in misfortune do we find out who our true friends are.” It is our true friends, she wrote, “to whom we unhesitatingly reveal happiness and whom we count on to share our rejoicing.” Arendt prized the humanity of intimate friendships where “friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands.”
As much as she believed in the power of intimate friendship, Arendt also understood what she called “the political relevance of friendship.” The world is not humane simply because it is made by human beings. Rather, the things of this world only become human “when we can discuss them with our fellows.” For Arendt, it follows that in public life, “friendship is not intimately personal but makes political demands and preserves reference to the world.” The common world is thus held together by friendship.
Politics and friendship both are based in the act of talking with others. There are no absolutes in either friendship or politics, where everything emerges from the act of speaking and acting in concert with others. Thus, Arendt insists there is no truth in politics. In politics it is opinion and not truth that matters. Absent truth, what holds the political world together is friendships, our sober and rational love for our fellow citizens.That friendship emerges in conversation and that conversation, and not the revelation of truths from on high, is the source of political consensus. That is why Arendt can say, with Cicero, “I prefer before heaven to go astray with Plato than hold true views with his opponents.” She means that friendship more so than truth is the foundation of a meaningful political world.
Both intimate and political friendships are in crisis today. Studies show that Americans have fewer and fewer friends with whom they can share their joys and sorrows. The crisis of friendship means the loss of a place in the world. And the crisis of political friendship means the loss of spaces and institutions where one can talk honestly and directly with those whom one shares a world amidst disagreements. Such institutions are threatened by echo chambers and algorithms that surround us only with like-minded acolytes.
The Arendt Center conference on Friendship and Politics brings together writers, thinkers, activists, and artists to collectively think about the importance of friendship in our world. We will ask:
Registration will open soon!
Conference takes place in Olin Hall.
“I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective—neither the German people nor the French, not the American, nor the working class nor anything of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends.”
—Hannah Arendt To Gershom Scholem, 1963
Hannah Arendt, whose thinking is at the heart of our center, was said to have a “genius for friendship.” Known as a political thinker, Arendt wrote to her friend Gershom Scholem that she could never love a state or a political people, but only her friends. For Arendt, “only in misfortune do we find out who our true friends are.” It is our true friends, she wrote, “to whom we unhesitatingly reveal happiness and whom we count on to share our rejoicing.” Arendt prized the humanity of intimate friendships where “friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands.”
As much as she believed in the power of intimate friendship, Arendt also understood what she called “the political relevance of friendship.” The world is not humane simply because it is made by human beings. Rather, the things of this world only become human “when we can discuss them with our fellows.” For Arendt, it follows that in public life, “friendship is not intimately personal but makes political demands and preserves reference to the world.” The common world is thus held together by friendship.
Politics and friendship both are based in the act of talking with others. There are no absolutes in either friendship or politics, where everything emerges from the act of speaking and acting in concert with others. Thus, Arendt insists there is no truth in politics. In politics it is opinion and not truth that matters. Absent truth, what holds the political world together is friendships, our sober and rational love for our fellow citizens.That friendship emerges in conversation and that conversation, and not the revelation of truths from on high, is the source of political consensus. That is why Arendt can say, with Cicero, “I prefer before heaven to go astray with Plato than hold true views with his opponents.” She means that friendship more so than truth is the foundation of a meaningful political world.
Both intimate and political friendships are in crisis today. Studies show that Americans have fewer and fewer friends with whom they can share their joys and sorrows. The crisis of friendship means the loss of a place in the world. And the crisis of political friendship means the loss of spaces and institutions where one can talk honestly and directly with those whom one shares a world amidst disagreements. Such institutions are threatened by echo chambers and algorithms that surround us only with like-minded acolytes.
The Arendt Center conference on Friendship and Politics brings together writers, thinkers, activists, and artists to collectively think about the importance of friendship in our world. We will ask:
- What is friendship? And Why is it so meaningful?
- Is there a crisis of friendship today? And if so, why?
- Do identity politics and the culture of individualism stand in the way of friendship?
- How can we nurture the intimate and public friendships that allow us to flourish?
- Epistolary friendships are an old tradition. What is the possibility of long-distance epistolary friendships in the internet age?
- Does social media make possible new types of friendships?
Registration coming soon!