Civil Disobedience III | Crises of the Republic

From Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz by Hannah Arendt Center

February 27, 2026 · 1h 4m · Episode 129

About this episode

The episode explores Hannah Arendt's essay 'Civil Disobedience' and its implications for politics and morality in the context of American constitutionalism.

We continue our reading of Hannah Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience” from Crises of the Republic. Host Roger Berkowitz frames it through Mary McCarthy’s critique that civil disobedience is fundamentally conscientious, citing Socrates, Thoreau, and Gandhi. Berkowitz explains Arendt’s radical distinction between conscience (singular, inner dialogue) and politics (plural, public), arguing that grounding politics in morality risks tyranny and civil war, and that justice for Arendt is primarily the preservation of liberty for minorities against majorities. He outlines Arendt’s claim that the American “spirit of the laws” is consent understood horizontally as mutual promise, from which collective dissent follows, making civil disobedience coherent with American constitutionalism and a safeguard amid accelerating change. Arendt critiques ideological movements, links consent to voluntary association, and proposes civil disobedience as an institutional check when courts abdicate via the political questions doctrine, even calling for a constitutional amendment. "Consent implies dissent and not individual dissent, but collective dissent." Rate and review if you like this podcast! ABOUT…

People in this episode

Host: Roger Berkowitz

Topics covered

civil disobedience
politics
morality
liberty
American constitutionalism
ideological movements
collective dissent

Keywords

Hannah Arendt
civil disobedience
politics
morality
liberty
American laws
collective dissent
ideological movements

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Civil Disobedience, Crises of the Republic