The Shipwrecked Mind On Political Reaction

Mark Lilla

eBook - 2016

Covering centuries of thought and politics, this collection of essays “offers a fascinating framework for making sense of our contemporary political landscape” (Vox). “Skillfully untangles the apocalyptic ‘mytho-histories,’ ‘just-so narratives,’ and ‘political bedtime stories’ favored by the modern right, in Europe and America.” —The New YorkerWe don’t understand the reactionary mind. In this timely book, Mark Lilla argues 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... more