Mark Lilla is Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern (1993) and the editor of New French Thought: Political Philosophy (1991). His latest book is The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. »

The Reckless Mind

Intellectuals in Politics

By Mark Lilla

How can intellectuals, who should be most alert to the evils of tyranny, betray the liberal ideals of freedom and independent inquiry? How can they take political positions that, implicitly or not, endorse oppression and human suffering on a vast scale?

The Reckless Mind is a study of how a number of important twentieth-century European intellectuals came to support tyrannical regimes and totalitarian political ideas. In profiles of Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre Kojčve, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, Mark Lilla demonstrates how the convulsions of the twentieth century shaped the political sensibilities of important thinkers who were so deluded by the ideologies of the time that they closed their eyes to brutality, coercion, and state terror.

Reviews

As Mr. Lilla ably shows, what is common to these thinkers is a rejection of political philosophy. They deny the possibility of a patient, sober and rational exploration of political possibilities. And even when they become disillusioned with specific tyrants—Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Khomeini —they continue to reject political moderation and balanced analysis.
— Daniel J. Mahoney, The Wall Street Journal

Lilla's accessible, summary look at eight 20th-century thinkers is a compilation of cautionary tales....a very canny book showing us how not to think and chew politics at the same time.
— Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Lilla has a gift for nimble exposition, and each study in his collection is illuminating, often revelatory. He possesses the skills of a dramatist, and the dilemmas and choices of his subjects are framed sharply though the eyes and judgements of their friends and sometimes lovers.
— Sunil Khilnani, The New York Times

Also see:

The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin Edited by Mark Lilla and Robert B. Silvers and Ronald Dworkin The two days of discussion preserved here demonstrate the continuing vitality and relevance of Isaiah Berlin's thought in today's social and political debates.

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