Mark Lilla

Intellectuals in Politics

The Reckless Mind

Gavin

Jaspers: “How can such an uncultivated man like Adolf Hitler govern Germany?”

Heidegger: “Culture doesn’t matter. Just look at his marvelous hands.”

Denunciation of the terrible politics of some academic darlings (Heidegger, Foucault, Benjamin, Carl Schmitt). The common theme is that their philosophies so radically distorted their perception, that their interventions in politics were inevitably harmful.

Lilla tries to make the edginess and procrustean attitudes of these men reflect badly on all philosophy, or philosophers in civil society. This doesn't work - think of Smith's influence, or Mill's, or Russell's, or Bentham's - though it might be true of a certain kind of Continental, the kind incentivised to say novel things regardless of their truth or consequences, I don't know.

Possibly I reacted so strongly because this was the first dissent against these great nasty obscurantists I'd seen; other writing by Lilla hasn't impressed me, and though the targets of this book are bipartisan, his agenda is too plain.

Good old Jaspers comes out very well from all this, anyway, an Obi-wan figure:

  I beseech you! if ever we shared philosophical impulses, take responsibility for your gifts! Place it in the service of reason, or of the reality of human worth & possibilities, instead of in the service of magic!

The Reckless Mind Intellectuals in Politics

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