A World We Share

“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

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.

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