Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz

In this bonus episode of the podcast, recorded on July 5 from Marlborough, Massachusetts, host Roger Berkowitz reflects on Fourth of July patriotism, baseball, and a Lapham’s Quarterly podcast series, Revolutionary America, edited by Donovan Hohn. Berkowitz highlights Lewis Lapham's archival conversations with Jill Lepore on historians’ duty to face complexity and humility, and with Gordon Wood, w...

In this episode of the podcast, host Roger Berkowitz discusses the final sections of Hannah Arendt’s essay “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” focusing on Arendt’s post-Eichmann turn to thinking, morality, and the collapse of shared moral certainties. He presents Arendt’s claim that morality is Socratic and grounded in solitude—the “two-in-one” dialogue that makes personhood, memory, and integri...

In this episode of the podcast, host Roger Berkowitz introduces Arendt’s essay “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” compiled by Jerome Kohn from 1965–66 courses after Eichmann in Jerusalem. He explains Hannah Arendt’s late turn to morality as a response to Nazism’s revelation that morality could function as mere custom, enabling ordinary people to become criminals by following law and public opin...

In this episode, host Roger Berkowitz walks us through the Prologue and first essay of our summer read, Responsibility and Judgment, a posthumous collection edited by Jerome Kohn. Introducing Arendt’s "Sonning Prize" lecture on persona, citizenship, and the exchangeable “mask” of public life, Berkowitz closely reads the opening essay, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” framed by the con...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, host Roger Berkowitz reflects on two recent gatherings and their relevance to Hannah Arendt’s concerns about truth, technology, and world-building. He recounts a Santa Fe Institute workshop on AI and institutions, like universities and law, arguing that AI should remain a tool rather than a force that replaces human agency. He warns that AI already distorts re...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, host Roger Berkowitz previews the Arendt Center’s collaboration with the International Human Rights Art Movement , including a June 5–7 New York City theater festival and the anthology Hannah Arendt: An American Hero . Drawn from 328 submissions from 64 countries and supported by NEH funding tied to the proposed “Garden of Heroes,” Berkowitz interviews contrib...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, host Roger Berkowitz shares about his recent talks in Athens at the House of Beautiful Business conference, and about the Bard College commencement, honoring Marilynne Robinson—before turning to the Hannah Arendt Center’s 20th anniversary Arendt Forum (Oct. 15–17) on Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?  Drawing on Arendt’s account of a shattered Western trad...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, host Roger Berkowitz welcomes Peter Rosenblum,  a professor of international law and human rights at Bard College, to discuss their constitutional law course, which is taught as a liberal-arts, critical-thinking class rather than pre-law. Beginning with Aristotle, Montesquieu, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, and Arendt, it asks what a constitution i...

In this bonus episode, host Roger Berkowitz interviews Chris Gibson, former U.S. Army colonel, Purple Heart recipient, ex–three-term congressman, former Williams College professor and Siena College president, and author of The Spirit of Philadelphia: A Call to Recover the Founding Principles . Gibson explains the “spirit of Philadelphia” as the coalescing energy of collaboration and compromise tha...

Recorded live at Bard College, this bonus episode features Roger Berkowitz in conversation with Walter Russell Mead, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida and Global View columnist for The Wall Street Journal. They discuss whether the post-1945 American-led liberal world order has fractured...

In this bonus episode, Roger Berkowitz welcomes George Packer—National Book Award–winning author of The Unwinding, staff writer for The Atlantic and contributor to The New Yorker—to discuss his 2025 novel The Emergency and his upcoming appearance at The Arendt Forum (October 15–17, 2026), the Hannah Arendt Center's 20th anniversary fall gathering on Solidarity . Packer explains that the pandemic a...

In this episode of the Reading Hannah Arendt podcast, Roger Berkowitz discusses Hannah Arendt’s final speech/essay “Home to Roost” (May 20, 1975), published in Responsibility and Judgment and widely received at the time. He explains Arendt’s rejection of celebrating “America” in favor of the Republic, emphasizing the United States as a plural republic rather than an ethnic nation-state, and her cl...

In this episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz concludes our reading of Crises of the Republic by introducing Arendt’s 1970 interview “Thoughts on Politics and Revolution.” Framing it through recent wars and Arendt’s claim that declining power invites violence, he emphasizes Arendt’s diagnosis of a “revolutionary situation” in which power has lost legitimacy and lies “in the streets,” yet would-b...

In this episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz summarizes part three of Hannah Arendt’s “On Violence,” reviewing the essay’s structure: action (not only violence) can interrupt historical processes; power and violence are opposites, and violence rises when power is in jeopardy. In section three, Arendt rejects social-scientific views that treat violence as beastly or irrational, arguing it can be...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz revisits and updates his latest columns on “ The Hell That is War Has Lost Its Power ,” arguing that modern war, though more precise and destructive, no longer resolves conflicts or stabilizes political order. Drawing on Clausewitz’s view of war as politics by other means and Arendt’s distinction between power and violence, he claims total war...

In this week's episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz focuses on the second section of Hannah Arendt's essay "On Violence" called “Power." Recapping part one’s claim that modernity has vastly expanded the means of violence while blurring its political rationality, prompting intellectuals to rationalize violence as manageable and creative, he explains Arendt’s central distinctions among power, str...

We met the host of the  Urgent Futures  podcast, Jesse Damiani, last year, and were thrilled when he came to our 2025 conference on  JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times . Afterwards, Roger Berkowitz sat down with Jesse at the Arendt Center to discuss finding joy in dark times and what Hannah Arendt can teach us today, and we're thrilled to share their conversation now on our Reading Hannah Arendt...

In this episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz introduces Part One of Hannah Arendt’s 1969 essay “On Violence” from Crises of the Republic, situating it amid contemporary civil unrest, AI debates, and a new Middle East war. He outlines the essay’s three-part structure and argues that Arendt critiques “preachers of violence” by insisting that all collective action—not violence alone—can interrupt...

In this bonus episode, host Roger Berkowitz interviews Helene Landemore about her new book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, with a focus on how her argument for citizens’ assemblies expands beyond epistemic “better decisions” to emphasize “civic love” and the bonding, trust, and transformation she observed in French assemblies and the Yellow Vests. They discuss Landemore’s...

We continue our reading of Hannah Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience” from Crises of the Republic. Host Roger Berkowitz frames it through Mary McCarthy’s critique that civil disobedience is fundamentally conscientious, citing Socrates, Thoreau, and Gandhi. Berkowitz explains Arendt’s radical distinction between conscience (singular, inner dialogue) and politics (plural, public), arguing that groun...

In this episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz introduces Hannah Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience” from Crises of the Republic. Framed by Eugene Rostow’s question about citizens’ moral relation to law in a society of consent, Berkowitz explains Arendt’s argument that civil disobedience is not an individual act of conscience or a legal test case, but a nonviolent political practice carried out p...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz and Lucy Benjamin discuss her book Planetary Politics: Arendt, Anarchy, and the Climate Crisis . They explore how Arendt's concepts of plurality and earthliness relate to contemporary environmental challenges. Benjamin emphasizes the importance of integrating Arendt's political theories with the urgent need to address climate change. They delve...

In this episode, Roger Berkowitz discusses the second parts of Arendt’s essay "Lying in Politics" from her book Crises of the Republic. Berkowitz explains Arendt’s critique of the Vietnam War policymakers, focusing on their detachment from reality and reliance on abstract problem-solving techniques. He highlights Arendt's argument that these policymakers substituted judgment with calculations, lea...

In this first episode of our new read, Roger Berkowitz introduces Hannah Arendt's Crises of the Republic. The book, written in 1972, delves into the crises facing the American Republic, including the Vietnam War, civil disobedience, and the ethos surrounding violence. Berkowitz emphasizes Arendt's focus on the relationship between lying and politics, particularly in the context of the Pentagon Pap...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, Roger Berkowitz discusses his essay "Candor Without Hypocrisy," which explores the current political landscape and the dangers of unrestrained candor. He examines the paradox of Donald Trump's perceived truth-telling and its impact on the liberal world order and democratic institutions. Berkowitz warns against the erosion of trust and the normalization of mili...