Mark Lilla argues that while the idea of revolution and the revolutionary have been studied ad nauseum, the idea of reaction and the reactionary have Mark Lilla argues that while the idea of revolution and the revolutionary have been studied ad nauseum, the idea of reaction and the reactionary have been neglected to our harm as a wave of reaction is becoming predominant in our modern world. The reactionary mind – the titular “shipwrecked mind” – does not describe the social/cultural conservative or the demagogue who takes advantage of the electorate’s fears to seize power. It refers to the intellectual movements that inform society’s fear of change, the other, economic stability, etc. and tries to make sense of them.
The summary provided on the book sleeve of the NYRB edition of The Shipwrecked Mind explains it nicely:
The reactionary is…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….
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.”
The book is divided into three sections containing essays (most originally published in the New York Review of Books). In “Thinkers,” Lilla looks at the lives of three intellectuals: Franz Rosenzweig, Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss. I had only heard of the latter. Among those of us left of center, Strauss is a bit of a bogey man; the intellectual grandfather of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or The Federalist Society. Lilla’s treatment of these three is very sympathetic. He doesn’t agree with them but he explores their thought and how they reached their conclusions, and doesn’t dismiss them as simply cranks like, say, Jordan Peterson.
“Currents” comprises two essays of intellectual history tracing reactionary thought & its response to how modern society has developed since the Middle Ages.
“Events” is an essay that begins with the Charlie Hebdo massacre of the staff of a French satirical magazine in 2015 by Muslim fundamentalists and moves on to an examination of the writings of two flavors of French reactionary thought: Éric Zemmour’s Le Suicide français and Michel Houellebecq’s Submission. Of the two books, the latter is the more intellectually hefty but both come to the same conclusion: Western civilization erred when it bet “that the more they extended human freedom, the happier they would be.” (129)
I found these essays informative and insightful and I would recommend this book....more
Loading...
