The Shipwrecked Mind, Mark Lilla
The Shipwrecked Mind, Mark Lilla
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The Shipwrecked Mind
On Political Reaction

Author: Mark Lilla

Narrator: Michael Kramer

Unabridged: 4 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/14/2017


Synopsis

We don't understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today's political dramas are unintelligible to us.

The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe. And like the revolutionary his political engagements are motivated by highly developed ideas.

Lilla begins with three twentieth-century philosophers—Franz Rosenzweig, Eric Voegelin, and Leo Strauss—who attributed the problems of modern society to a break in the history of ideas and promoted a return to earlier modes of thought. He then examines the enduring power of grand historical narratives of betrayal to shape political outlooks since the French Revolution, and shows how these narratives are employed in the writings of Europe’s right-wing cultural pessimists and Maoist neocommunists, American theoconservatives fantasizing about the harmony of medieval Catholic society and radical Islamists seeking to restore a vanished Muslim caliphate.

The revolutionary spirit that inspired political movements across the world for two centuries may have died out. But the spirit of reaction that rose to meet it has survived and is proving just as formidable a historical force. We live in an age when the tragicomic nostalgia of Don Quixote for a lost golden age has been transformed into a potent and sometimes deadly weapon. Mark Lilla helps us to understand why.

About Mark Lilla

Mark Lilla was born in Detroit in 1956. He is Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and a regular essayist for the New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, and G. B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern, as well as The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin with Ronald Dworkin and Robert B. Silvers. He was the 2015 Overseas Press Club of America winner of the Best Commentary on international News in Any Medium for "On France."


Reviews

Goodreads review by Beauregard on December 21, 2017

The present (not the past) is a foreign country to modern day purveyors of hate and the reactionaries featured in this book. A neo-nazi drives his car into protestors and a Republican president's only response in 144 characters or less is "both sides are to blame" (8/12/17). How do Republican follow......more

Goodreads review by Richard on March 14, 2017

This was… um… interesting. Not quite what I was expecting, and not all that interesting except on a purely theoretical level. Lilla’s definition of “reactionary” is at the crux of my ambivalence. I use that to refer to someone who wants to rewind the clock back, but not necessarily break it so it ne......more

Goodreads review by Conor on April 23, 2018

This was not really what I expected. It starts out talking about reactionaries in modern America and France, noting that they are the true radicals in society with their stated intentions to revert to eras we’ve decidedly moved on from. So far, so good. But then he veers off on a severe and lengthy t......more

Goodreads review by Uxküll on February 26, 2017

Disappointing and somewhat incoherent, does not achieve what it's ambitious claim at the beginning asserts, but still offers the reader some tasty morsels of insight which are appreciated. The authors selected for establishing the analysis of a standard 'reactionary', Rosenzweig, Voegelin and Strauss......more

Goodreads review by Stewart on October 18, 2016

The introduction to Mark Lila’s “The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction,” a book published in 2016, provides an excellent start to what I thought would be an insightful book about the mindset of reactionaries in the late 20th century and early 21st century in the United States, in Europe, and......more