Roger Berkowitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 265753 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roger Berkowitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roger |
| FAMILY NAME | Berkowitz |
| SIGNATURE | BERKOWITZ R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bard College |
| ORCID | 0009-0001-4002-5486 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Between the national and the personal
This study examines the extent to which personal agency is manifest in diplomacy. While current research in IR tends to adopt the representative framework when studying the power of individuals in advancing state goals, our study highlights moments at which personal agency and diplomatic agency part ways. Based on ethnographic observations at the State of Israel’s presidential residence – we recorded and transcribed 27 conversations between the p…
Drucilla Cornell’s Revolutionary Thinking
Drucilla Cornell’s work revitalized my belief in the transformative power of philosophy. Her book, ‘The Philosophy of the Limit’, underscored that philosophy has practical consequences and can challenge and transform the law. Cornell’s philosophy emphasizes the distinction between law and justice, advocating for continual revolutionary action against systemic cruelty. Her unwavering commitment to justice, reflected in her writings and activism, l…
Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism
“S’il n’y avait pas eu Gaza, Mamdani ne serait pas maire de New York”
I planted blind hope in their hearts
Performing good diplomatic relations
Communicating through Protocols
This study questions to what extent state agents invest efforts in building interpersonal relations with their counterparts. It is based on data collected during two years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Israeli president's residence, where we observed credential ceremonies involving ambassadors from twenty-three states and interviewed the president's advisors. We consider the credential ceremony an extreme case study regulated by highly formali…
Solidão Total
Hannah Arendt decidiu responder à pergunta “O que é o totalitarismo?” olhando para o nazismo e o bolchevismo, os dois movimentos totalitários que marcaram a primeira metade do século XX. Ela entendia que o totalitarismo pretendia a evisceração total da liberdade. O governo totalitário visa o “domínio total de toda a população da terra, a eliminação de toda realidade rival não-totalitária”. Uma vez que uma pessoa que pode pensar e mudar de ideia r…
Solidão Total
Hannah Arendt decidiu responder à pergunta “O que é o totalitarismo?” olhando para o nazismo e o bolchevismo, os dois movimentos totalitários que marcaram a primeira metade do século XX. Ela entendia que o totalitarismo pretendia a evisceração total da liberdade. O governo totalitário visa o “domínio total de toda a população da terra, a eliminação de toda realidade rival não-totalitária”3. Uma vez que uma pessoa que pode pensar e mudar de ideia …
La banalité du mal n’est pas un cliché
Impossible Politics
The Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has been developing an argument about the impossibility of politics in an age of rising authoritarianism. Gessen turns to Hannah Arendt to articulate the phenomenon of freedom in belonging to a movement fighting for freedom. This freedom is what Arendt calls the “treasure” of the public space where people act together. However, the passionate bonds that emerge amidst communal freedom are often intolera…
Artifacts of Thinking
Instituting freedom
Steve Buckler’s Hannah Arendt and Political Theory is most revealing in the final chapter, ‘‘The Role of the Theorist.’’ I did not know Buckler, but this final chapter of his last book must stand as his apologia, his attempt—mediated through Arendt—to offer an account of a lifelong pursuit of an engaged politics. The theorist, Buckler writes, thinks and speaks from ‘‘the standpoint of the reflective citizen rather than [the standpoint] Arendt tak…
Drones and the Question of “The Human”
Domino's Pizza is testing “Domicopter” drones to deliver pizzas, which will compete with Taco Bell's “Tacocopter” drones. Not to be outdone, Amazon is working on an army of delivery drones that will cut out the postal service. In Denmark, farmers use drones to inspect fields for the appearance of harmful weeds, which reduces herbicide use as the drones directly apply pesticides only where it is needed. Environmentalists send drones into glacial c…
Did Eichmann Think
Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer," is the new English translation of Bettina Stangneth's exhaustive history of the life of Adolf Eichmann. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to try to understand Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi lieutenant colonel who was responsible for the logistics of the Holocaust.Stangneth has pieced together the scattered transcripts of the interviews Eichmann gave with the Dutch Naz…
Bearing Logs on Our Shoulders
On her first return visit to Germany in 1950, Hannah Arendt went walking in the Black Forest with Martin Heidegger. They discussed revenge, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Upon her return to New York, Arendt began her diary of thoughts, her Denktagebuch . The first seven pages of Arendt's Denktagebuch argue that reconciliation—and not revenge or forgiveness—is an essential example of political judgment. The connection between reconciliation and …
Assassinating Justly
Assassination has always been part of war and in recent years it has played increasingly important roles in United States military policy. The assassination of Osama bin Laden offers itself as an example of an assassination that nevertheless claims to be just. Comparing the bin Laden assassination with the assassination of Simon Petlura by Sholom Schwartzbard in 1927 and the kidnapping and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, this article argues that…
Thinking in dark times
Liberating the Animal
Liberating the Animal: The False Promise of Nietzsche’s Anti-Human Philosophy Roger Berkowitz (bio) Vanessa Lemm, Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. US $24.00 (paper), 244 pp. ISBN 9780823230280 The animality of humans has been a basic axiom of philosophical thinking at least since Aristotle characterized the human being as the animal having logos. Logo…
Thinking in Dark Times
"Thinking in Dark Times" published on by Fordham University Press.
The Gift of Science
Parables of Revenge and Masculinity in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River
This paper offers a reading of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River. Mystic River differs from archetypal Hollywood revenge movies in one important way: the act of revenge kills the wrong man. Moreover, instead of abandoning its wayward avenger, the movie strives to defend or at least to understand the act of wrongful vengeance as the loving act of a kingly father. To explore the connection between trauma, masculinity, and revenge, the paper follow…
Introduction
The Accusers
This essay begins with the observation that the American culture industry is nearly incapable of presenting state prosecutors in a positive light. Through readings of three apparent exceptions to this rule, the essay argues that prosecutors can only be heroically and positively conceived on screen when they abandon their traditional association with law and seek to do justice beyond the laws. To the extent that prosecutors can be seen as a proxy …
Drones and the Question of “The Human”
Domino's Pizza is testing “Domicopter” drones to deliver pizzas, which will compete with Taco Bell's “Tacocopter” drones. Not to be outdone, Amazon is working on an army of delivery drones that will cut out the postal service. In Denmark, farmers use drones to inspect fields for the appearance of harmful weeds, which reduces herbicide use as the drones directly apply pesticides only where it is needed. Environmentalists send drones into glacial c…
Communicating through Protocols
This study questions to what extent state agents invest efforts in building interpersonal relations with their counterparts. It is based on data collected during two years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Israeli president's residence, where we observed credential ceremonies involving ambassadors from twenty-three states and interviewed the president's advisors. We consider the credential ceremony an extreme case study regulated by highly formali…
Parables of Revenge and Masculinity in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River
This paper offers a reading of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River. Mystic River differs from archetypal Hollywood revenge movies in one important way: the act of revenge kills the wrong man. Moreover, instead of abandoning its wayward avenger, the movie strives to defend or at least to understand the act of wrongful vengeance as the loving act of a kingly father. To explore the connection between trauma, masculinity, and revenge, the paper follow…
Performing good diplomatic relations
Instituting freedom
Steve Buckler’s Hannah Arendt and Political Theory is most revealing in the final chapter, ‘‘The Role of the Theorist.’’ I did not know Buckler, but this final chapter of his last book must stand as his apologia, his attempt—mediated through Arendt—to offer an account of a lifelong pursuit of an engaged politics. The theorist, Buckler writes, thinks and speaks from ‘‘the standpoint of the reflective citizen rather than [the standpoint] Arendt tak…
Did Eichmann Think
Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer," is the new English translation of Bettina Stangneth's exhaustive history of the life of Adolf Eichmann. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to try to understand Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi lieutenant colonel who was responsible for the logistics of the Holocaust.Stangneth has pieced together the scattered transcripts of the interviews Eichmann gave with the Dutch Naz…
Assassinating Justly
Assassination has always been part of war and in recent years it has played increasingly important roles in United States military policy. The assassination of Osama bin Laden offers itself as an example of an assassination that nevertheless claims to be just. Comparing the bin Laden assassination with the assassination of Simon Petlura by Sholom Schwartzbard in 1927 and the kidnapping and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, this article argues that…
The Accusers
This essay begins with the observation that the American culture industry is nearly incapable of presenting state prosecutors in a positive light. Through readings of three apparent exceptions to this rule, the essay argues that prosecutors can only be heroically and positively conceived on screen when they abandon their traditional association with law and seek to do justice beyond the laws. To the extent that prosecutors can be seen as a proxy …
The Gift of Science
Parables of Revenge and Masculinity in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River
This paper offers a reading of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River. Mystic River differs from archetypal Hollywood revenge movies in one important way: the act of revenge kills the wrong man. Moreover, instead of abandoning its wayward avenger, the movie strives to defend or at least to understand the act of wrongful vengeance as the loving act of a kingly father. To explore the connection between trauma, masculinity, and revenge, the paper follow…
Introduction
Thinking in Dark Times
"Thinking in Dark Times" published on by Fordham University Press.
Thinking in dark times
Liberating the Animal
Liberating the Animal: The False Promise of Nietzsche’s Anti-Human Philosophy Roger Berkowitz (bio) Vanessa Lemm, Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. US $24.00 (paper), 244 pp. ISBN 9780823230280 The animality of humans has been a basic axiom of philosophical thinking at least since Aristotle characterized the human being as the animal having logos. Logo…
Bearing Logs on Our Shoulders
On her first return visit to Germany in 1950, Hannah Arendt went walking in the Black Forest with Martin Heidegger. They discussed revenge, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Upon her return to New York, Arendt began her diary of thoughts, her Denktagebuch . The first seven pages of Arendt's Denktagebuch argue that reconciliation—and not revenge or forgiveness—is an essential example of political judgment. The connection between reconciliation and …
Assassinating Justly
Assassination has always been part of war and in recent years it has played increasingly important roles in United States military policy. The assassination of Osama bin Laden offers itself as an example of an assassination that nevertheless claims to be just. Comparing the bin Laden assassination with the assassination of Simon Petlura by Sholom Schwartzbard in 1927 and the kidnapping and trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, this article argues that…
Instituting freedom
Steve Buckler’s Hannah Arendt and Political Theory is most revealing in the final chapter, ‘‘The Role of the Theorist.’’ I did not know Buckler, but this final chapter of his last book must stand as his apologia, his attempt—mediated through Arendt—to offer an account of a lifelong pursuit of an engaged politics. The theorist, Buckler writes, thinks and speaks from ‘‘the standpoint of the reflective citizen rather than [the standpoint] Arendt tak…
Drones and the Question of “The Human”
Domino's Pizza is testing “Domicopter” drones to deliver pizzas, which will compete with Taco Bell's “Tacocopter” drones. Not to be outdone, Amazon is working on an army of delivery drones that will cut out the postal service. In Denmark, farmers use drones to inspect fields for the appearance of harmful weeds, which reduces herbicide use as the drones directly apply pesticides only where it is needed. Environmentalists send drones into glacial c…
Did Eichmann Think
Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer," is the new English translation of Bettina Stangneth's exhaustive history of the life of Adolf Eichmann. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to try to understand Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi lieutenant colonel who was responsible for the logistics of the Holocaust.Stangneth has pieced together the scattered transcripts of the interviews Eichmann gave with the Dutch Naz…
Artifacts of Thinking
Impossible Politics
The Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has been developing an argument about the impossibility of politics in an age of rising authoritarianism. Gessen turns to Hannah Arendt to articulate the phenomenon of freedom in belonging to a movement fighting for freedom. This freedom is what Arendt calls the “treasure” of the public space where people act together. However, the passionate bonds that emerge amidst communal freedom are often intolera…
Solidão Total
Hannah Arendt decidiu responder à pergunta “O que é o totalitarismo?” olhando para o nazismo e o bolchevismo, os dois movimentos totalitários que marcaram a primeira metade do século XX. Ela entendia que o totalitarismo pretendia a evisceração total da liberdade. O governo totalitário visa o “domínio total de toda a população da terra, a eliminação de toda realidade rival não-totalitária”3. Uma vez que uma pessoa que pode pensar e mudar de ideia …
La banalité du mal n’est pas un cliché
Solidão Total
Hannah Arendt decidiu responder à pergunta “O que é o totalitarismo?” olhando para o nazismo e o bolchevismo, os dois movimentos totalitários que marcaram a primeira metade do século XX. Ela entendia que o totalitarismo pretendia a evisceração total da liberdade. O governo totalitário visa o “domínio total de toda a população da terra, a eliminação de toda realidade rival não-totalitária”. Uma vez que uma pessoa que pode pensar e mudar de ideia r…
Performing good diplomatic relations
Communicating through Protocols
This study questions to what extent state agents invest efforts in building interpersonal relations with their counterparts. It is based on data collected during two years of ethnographic fieldwork at the Israeli president's residence, where we observed credential ceremonies involving ambassadors from twenty-three states and interviewed the president's advisors. We consider the credential ceremony an extreme case study regulated by highly formali…
Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism
“S’il n’y avait pas eu Gaza, Mamdani ne serait pas maire de New York”
I planted blind hope in their hearts
Between the national and the personal
This study examines the extent to which personal agency is manifest in diplomacy. While current research in IR tends to adopt the representative framework when studying the power of individuals in advancing state goals, our study highlights moments at which personal agency and diplomatic agency part ways. Based on ethnographic observations at the State of Israel’s presidential residence – we recorded and transcribed 27 conversations between the p…
Drucilla Cornell’s Revolutionary Thinking
Drucilla Cornell’s work revitalized my belief in the transformative power of philosophy. Her book, ‘The Philosophy of the Limit’, underscored that philosophy has practical consequences and can challenge and transform the law. Cornell’s philosophy emphasizes the distinction between law and justice, advocating for continual revolutionary action against systemic cruelty. Her unwavering commitment to justice, reflected in her writings and activism, l…
Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy (4 works)