The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics

The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics

Revised Edition

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Publisher Description

“A skilled exploration” of why 6 notable 20th-century philosophers—from Martin Heidegger to Michel Foucault—succumbed to “a narcissistic embrace of totalitarian politics” (The Washington Post).

European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and scholars who supported or excused the worst tyrannies of the age. How was this possible? How could intellectuals whose work depends on freedom defend those who would deny it? Here, Mark Lilla explores the psychology of political commitment in profiles of 6 leading 20th-century thinkers:

Martin Heidegger
Carl Schmitt
Walter Benjamin
Alexandre Kojève
Michel Foucault
Jacques Derrida

As continental Europe gave birth to two great ideological systems in the 20th century, communism and fascism, it also gave birth to a new social type, the philotyrannical intellectual. Lilla shows how these thinkers were not only grappling with enduring philosophical questions, they were also writing out of their own experiences and passions. These profiles demonstrate how intellectuals can be driven into a political sphere they scarcely understand, with momentous results.

In a new afterword, Lilla traces how the intellectual world has changed since the end of the cold war. The ideological passions of the past have been replaced in the West, he argues, by a dogma of individual autonomy and freedom that both obscures the historical forces at work in the present and sanctions ignorance about them, leaving us ill-equipped to understand those who are inflamed by the new global ideologies of our time.

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2016
September 6
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
248
Pages
PUBLISHER
New York Review Books
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
1.8
MB
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