A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World

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.

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.