{"product_id":"9781681371177","title":"The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics: Revised Edition","description":"European history of the past century is full of examples of  philosophers, writers, and scholars who supported or excused the worst  tyrannies of the age. How was this possible? How could intellectuals  whose work depends on freedom defend those who would deny it?   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn  profiles of six leading twentieth-century thinkers—Martin Heidegger,  Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre Kojève, Michel Foucault, and  Jacques Derrida—Mark Lilla explores the psychology of political  commitment. As continental Europe gave birth to two great ideological  systems in the twentieth century, communism and fascism, it also gave  birth to a new social type, the philotyrannical intellectual. Lilla  shows how these thinkers were not only grappling with enduring  philosophical questions, they were also writing out of their own  experiences and passions. These profiles demonstrate how intellectuals  can be driven into a political sphere they scarcely understand, with  momentous results.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a new afterword, Lilla traces how the  intellectual world has changed since the end of the cold war. The  ideological passions of the past have been replaced in the West, he  argues, by a dogma of individual autonomy and freedom that both obscures  the historical forces at work in the present and sanctions ignorance  about them, leaving us ill-equipped to understand those who are inflamed  by the new global ideologies of our time.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47167710265584,"sku":"9781681371177","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781681371177_p0.jpg?v=1763693627","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781681371177","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}