Against a Politics of Truth: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World

We often hear that democracy is in crisis because people no longer agree on the truth. Hannah Arendt suggests something deeper: democracy is failing because we have forgotten the political power of friendship. For Arendt, politics depends on a shared world built through both intimate and civic friendship. In this talk, Roger Berkowitz argues that Arendt’s friendships—with poets, critics, philosophers, Zionists, anti-Zionists, exiles, and even enemies—reveal a politics rooted not in agreement, but in conversation, judgment, and the courage to stay in the conversation across difference.

Part of the European Democracy Institute's Berlin Conversations.

Roger Berkowitz is Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights at Bard College and Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities. His new book is A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World (Yale University Press, 2026). He is the author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition (2005). Recent edited collections include: Joy: Loving the World in Dark Times (DeGruyter, 2026) and Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism (DeGruyter, 2025). He hosts the podcast "Reading Hannah Arendt" and writes the weekly Amor Mundi newsletter. Berkowitz is the recipient of the 2024 "Compassion" given by Con-Solatio, and the 2019 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought awarded by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

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For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Julie Johnson Kidd Hall, Waldstraße 15, 13165 Berlin

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