Mark Lilla

Mark Lilla (* 1956 in Detroit ) is an American political scientist and publicist. Since 2007 he has been Professor of the History of Ideas at Columbia University , New York City .

Life

Lilla studied economics and political science and then worked as a publicist. From 1980 to 1984 he was an editor for the neoconservative quarterly magazine " The Public Interest ". He then taught at Harvard University . Lilla is primarily concerned with the history of political and religious ideas in the western world . He has been Professor of Humanities at Columbia University since 2007 . In 2014/15 he spent a sabbatical year in Paris.

Lilla wrote several works on Isaiah Berlin and Giambattista Vico , as well as on the French philosophers at the end of the 20th century. He also wrote the study " The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals and Politics " and he published " The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West ”, a history of political theology . He regularly writes essays and reviews for The New York Review of Books .

Positions

In The Shine of the Past (2018), Lilla examines the successful mechanisms of populist criticism of the elite. “The reactionaries of our time have discovered,” he writes, “that nostalgia is a powerful political motivation, perhaps even stronger than hope. Hopes can be disappointed, but nostalgia is irrefutable. "

Lilla criticizes the liberal identity politicians of the USA. The constant talk about (group) identities, which children learn today before they acquire an identity, would have contributed to Hillary Clinton's electoral defeat. American schools would create progressives who narcissistically ignore everything that happens outside of their self-defined groups.

Fonts (selection)

• The glory of the past. About the spirit of the reaction . NZZ Libro, 2018, ISBN 978-3038103233 .
• The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction . New York Review Books, 2017 ISBN 1590179021 .
• The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics , 2017, ISBN 978-006269743-1
• Betrayed by History (essay, published shortly after the 2016 US presidential election )
• The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West . Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2007, ISBN 1-40004-367-0 .
  • German by Elisabeth Liebl: God believed dead. Politics in the power field of religions . Kösel-Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-466-37072-6 .
• The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals and Politics . New York Review Books, 2001, ISBN 1-59017-071-7 .
  • German by Elisabeth Liebl: The unrestrained spirit. The tyrannophilia of the intellectuals . Kösel-Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-466-37128-0 .
• The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin . New York Review Books, 2001, ISBN 1-59017-009-1 .
• New French Thought: Political Philosophy . Princeton University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-69100-105-7 .
• GB Vico: The Making of an Antimodern . Harvard University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-67433-963-0 .
• The Public Face of Architecture: Civic Culture and Public Spaces . Free Press, 1987, ISBN 0-02911-811-5 .

literature

• Political Philosophy versus Political Theology? The question of violence in the field of tension between politics and religion , ed. by Wolfgang Palaver , Andreas Oberprantacher, Dietmar Regensburger, Innsbruck, Innsbruck University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-3-902811-12-7 (Interdisciplinary examination of Mark Lilla's book The Stillborn God ) pdf-file

Web links

• Mark Lilla. Professor of Humanities. In: Columbia University website. Retrieved March 8, 2011 (Columbia University Chair's website). 
• “ We no longer have any terms for what is happening ”. An interview with the American political scientist Mark Lilla about the revolution in the Arab world . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . March 7, 2011, accessed on March 7, 2011 (interview with Andrea Köhler). 
• The Truth About Our Libertarian Age. Why the dogma of democracy doesn't always make the world better. New Republic , June 17, 2014
• A Conversation with Mark Lilla on His Critique of Identity Politics , The New Yorker , August 25, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mark Lilla: The constant improvement of the illusions. In: nzz.ch. November 28, 2015, accessed October 14, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Nils Markwardt: Why right-wing elite criticism is successful. In: Der Tagesspiegel, September 30, 2018.
3. ^ Mark Lilla: The End of Identity Liberalism , in: The New York Times, November 18, 2016.
4. ^ The one that is mentioned again in FAZ of June 15, 2013, page 32