Friendship and Politics

This lecture by Roger Berkowitz offers an account of Hannah Arendt’s thinking about friendship especially as it connects to her thinking about politics. Friendship, according to Arendt, involves intimate conversations between two people who share their views and differences, creating a common world. Arendt distinguishes friendship from love, emphasizing its respect for personal boundaries and thus respect for the friend in their uniqueness and difference. Friendship, in her view, humanizes the world by allowing individuals to engage in meaningful dialogue despite their differences. Arendt believes that friendships can bridge gaps in political discourse and unite people while respecting their diverse opinions. The lecture explores the role of friendship in Arendt's political thinking, its limitations in cases of extreme wrongdoing, and its relevance in today's political conversations.

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Roger Berkowitz is the founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center as well as professor of politics, philosophy, and human rights at Bard College. Berkowitz writes and speaks about how justice is made present in the world. He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition, editor of Perils of Invention: Lying, Technology, and the Human Condition (2022), coeditor of Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt's Denktagebuch (2017), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2010), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012), and editor of the annual journal HA: The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center and the Arendt Center weekly newsletter, Amor Mundi. His writings have appeared in numerous venues such as The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Paris Review online. In 2019, Berkowitz received the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought given by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Bremen, Germany.

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

Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Lecture Hall

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