Politics Program and Hannah Arendt Center present:
Roger Berkowitz, A WORLD WE SHARE: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World
In conversation with Michelle Murray
Thursday, November 12, 2026
Oblong Books, Rhinebeck
6:15 pm
This event occurs on:
Thu. November 12, 6:15 pm
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was known to possess a “genius for friendship.” A Jew in Nazi Germany, an exile in Paris and New York, and an uncompromising critic of postwar orthodoxies, she survived and flourished through friendships that were intellectually intense, complicated, and morally demanding. Her tribe of outsiders included thinkers as disparate as Karl Jaspers, Hans Jonas, Mary McCarthy, Gershom Scholem, Heinrich Blücher, and Martin Heidegger.
This book explores how these friendships shaped Arendt’s political thinking. Berkowitz weaves Arendt’s life, thought, and friendships into a powerful meditation on our present moment. In an age of mass loneliness, ideological certainty, and civic breakdown, A World We Share connects democracy not to consensus or moral purity but to our capacity to maintain relationships with others we do not agree with—and cannot fully understand.
Roger Berkowitz is founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College. His books include The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition. He also hosts the podcast Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.
Michelle Murray is Associate Professor of Political Studies and Chair, Social Studies Division, at Bard College.
FREE
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was known to possess a “genius for friendship.” A Jew in Nazi Germany, an exile in Paris and New York, and an uncompromising critic of postwar orthodoxies, she survived and flourished through friendships that were intellectually intense, complicated, and morally demanding. Her tribe of outsiders included thinkers as disparate as Karl Jaspers, Hans Jonas, Mary McCarthy, Gershom Scholem, Heinrich Blücher, and Martin Heidegger.
This book explores how these friendships shaped Arendt’s political thinking. Berkowitz weaves Arendt’s life, thought, and friendships into a powerful meditation on our present moment. In an age of mass loneliness, ideological certainty, and civic breakdown, A World We Share connects democracy not to consensus or moral purity but to our capacity to maintain relationships with others we do not agree with—and cannot fully understand.
Roger Berkowitz is founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College. His books include The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition. He also hosts the podcast Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.
Michelle Murray is Associate Professor of Political Studies and Chair, Social Studies Division, at Bard College.
FREE