The reckless mind
Subtitle: intellectuals in politics
By: Mark Lilla.
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
Subjects: Intellectuals -- Europe -- History -- 20th century.; Totalitarianism -- History -- 20th century.; Europe -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
Description: "In 1953 Czeslaw Milosz published The Captive Mind, his classic study of how intellectuals in postwar Eastern Europe were tempted to collaborate with the Communist system under which they lived. But they were hardly unique. European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and jurists who, whether they lived in democratic, Communist, or fascist societies, supported and defended totalitarian principles and horrific regimes.".

"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?

In profiles of Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre Kojeve, 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."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: "This is a New York Review Book."--t.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Martin Heidegger; title: Hannah Arendt; title: Karl Jaspers; title: Carl Schmitt; title: Walter Benjamin; title: Alexandre Kojève; title: Michel Foucault; title: Jacques Derrida; title: The lure of Syracuse.