Talking to ... Mark Lilla

If there's a great mystery in the history of ideas, it lies in where the blind spots of thought are encountered. However, this raises the question of precisely what conditions lead to such blind thinking. When Mark Lilla, a professor of humanities at Columbia University whose work has delved deeply into the history of political theology, prefaces his book Ignorance and Bliss with the motto of an English Writer: »The faintest of all human passions is the love of truth,« he's highlighting the underlying dilemma: that the love of truth pales in comparison to other passions. And because he’s somewhat surprised this fact has received comparatively little attention in the history of philosophy—with the exception of Nietzsche—in his latest book, Lilla turns to the psychology of the present-day obliviousness, characterizing various paradigms within which the will to ignorance has found expression. Looking around at our present, we're confronted with countless varieties of blissful ignorance, making our conversation with him all the more rewarding as an in-depth exploration of a terrain that's received little attention.

After working as an editor at The Public Interest and holding professorships at New York University and the University of Chicago, Mark Lilla became a professor of humanities at Columbia University in 2007. He regularly writes for the New York Times and New York Review of Books, among many other publications.

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