A World We Share
Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Yale University Press
Publishing:12th Jan '27
£20.00
This title is due to be published on 12th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A bold rethinking of politics through Hannah Arendt’s life and thought, arguing that friendship—not truth—is the fragile but necessary foundation of democratic life
A World We Share sounds the warning that politics cannot be saved by truth alone. Against a tradition that elevates truth above all else, Roger Berkowitz draws on the life and thought of Hannah Arendt to argue that a politics governed by an objective ideal of truth becomes cruel, coercive, and ultimately anti-political. Friendship—grounded in dialogue, respect, and plurality—offers a more human political bond.
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. Berkowitz argues that our political crisis is actually founded in a crisis of friendship. Only by nurturing private and also public friendships can we reimagine a truly democratic politics.
“In this beautifully written book, Roger Berkowitz explores Arendt’s ideas on friendship and truth. Her claim that politics is about opinion and not truth was controversial in its time, and Berkowitz’s passionate reconstruction will generate discussion in ours as well.”—Seyla Benhabib, Professor Emerita at Yale and senior Research Fellow, Columbia Law
“Roger Berkowitz has written a brave, lucid and essential meditation on friendship. Fair minded progressive thinkers will find this book to be a useful provocation in our chillingly fractious times. It is a comfort and a guide as we are called upon daily to live and thrive with those with whom we passionately disagree.”—Bill T. Jones, Choreographer, co-founder of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Co. & Founding Artistic Director New York Live Arts
“This slim tour de force maps how friendship—grounded in free discourse, integrity, and radical openness—can be a bold art to restore our divided world. If there’s one book you read this year, let it be this one.”—Dawn Tripp, author of Jackie
“At a moment when ideological certainty has eclipsed human solidarity across the political spectrum, Roger Berkowitz revives Hannah Arendt’s politics of friendship as a radical democratic alternative. Against the authority of Plato’s philosopher-king and the modern technocrat, he argues that persuasion, plurality, and the fragile bonds forged through conversation remain the only durable ground of a shared political world. Urgent and deeply humane, this is a book for anyone who still believes—or is willing to be persuaded—that conversation across difference is possible and necessary.”—Walter Russell Mead, Hudson Institute
“Roger Berkowitz has written a beautiful and deeply humane book of which Hannah Arendt would be proud. What does it mean to cultivate our common ground? Is an unwavering commitment to justice and truth fundamentally at odds with the humility and respect for difference demanded of genuine friends? Not just erudite but wisdom-filled, A World We Share is itself a gift of friendship in this fractured, embittered time.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse
ISBN: 9780300287097
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
176 pages