The reckless mind : intellectuals in politics / Mark Lilla.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lilla, Mark.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intellectuals--Europe--History--20th century.

Intellectuals.

Totalitarianism.

History.

Europe--Intellectual life--20th century.

Europe.

Intellectual life.

Totalitarianism--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

xiii, 216 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York Review Books, 2001.

Summary:

European history or 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? In profiles or six leading twentieth-century thinkers-Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre Kojève, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida-Mark Lilla explores the psychology of political commitment. As continental Europe gave birth to two great ideological systems in the twentieth 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 nave 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter I Martin Heidegger Hannah Arendt Karl Jaspers 1

Chapter II Carl Schmitt 47

Chapter III Walter Benjamin 77

Chapter IV Alexandre Kojève 113

Chapter V Michel Foucault 137

Chapter VI Jacques Derrida 159.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0940322765

OCLC:

46640589