Rise of the Reactionary

“The enduring vitality of the reactionary spirit even in the absence of a revolutionary political program,” writes Mark Lilla (Member, Social Science, 1997–98), arises from the feeling that “to live a modern life anywhere in the world today, subject to perpetual social and technological changes, is to experience the psychological equivalent of permanent revolution.” Of Lilla's recently published The Shipwrecked Mind (New York Review Books), the New Yorker's Sam Tanenhaus writes:

Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia, skillfully untangles the apocalyptic “mytho-histories,” “just-so narratives,” and “political bedtime stories” favored by the modern right, in Europe and America. . . . Imperfect though Trump may be, the argument goes, he has all the right enemies: Beltway insiders, academics, “social scientists, media pundits, and policy professionals,” as Clarence Thomas’s tutor John Marini wrote. . . . “They believe that the only sane response to an apocalypse is to provoke another, in hopes of starting over,” Lilla writes.

Read the full review of Mark Lilla's collection of essays on philosophical and religious reaction: http://bit.ly/2ejXntX