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    The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction
    The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction
    The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction

    Written by Mark Lilla

    Narrated by Michael Kramer

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 14, 2017
    ISBN9781515989868
    The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction
    Author

    Mark Lilla

    Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a prizewinning essayist for the New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction; The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West; and The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for The Shipwrecked Mind

    4/5

    38 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Fantastic book, well researched. Mr. Lilla is an excellent writer. He traverses history and or social state with objective clarity.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Just how blinkered is political reactionism? Very. In this short volume, Lilla gives us an overview of the movement's history and its fallacious notions. Worth the read even if it weren't so timely. Given the reactionary forces at work in the world today, it's practically mandatory.
    • 5/5
      This is a fairly amazing set of essays that I will re-read at least once, if not twice.