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BOOK REVIEWS The psychology of happiness is a old friend and former colleague that his the intellectuals in the 20th century have complex field. There is a plethora of commitment was a mistake. Heidegger for worshipped. Drawing on Plato’s idea of the theories, research measures and definitions. his part distanced himself from Jaspers, philosopher as a man in love with abstract But for those who have yet to encounter whose wife was Jewish, during his ideas of Beauty and Goodness, Lilla argues the significant developments that the field rectorship at Freiburg University. Arendt that intellectuals need self-discipline if they of psychology has to offer this is an excellent fled to France, and then onto the US. Even are not to let this love become an all- overview. after the Nazi defeat and the revelations consuming obsession with forcing the about the death camps, Heidegger refused world to conform to abstract concepts. Reviewed by Richard Tooth to apologise for his part in the regime, Lilla has hit upon an important point: forcing Jaspers and Arendt to conclude that most of the intellectuals discussed in these despite his philosophical brilliance, essays were caught up in essentially Heidegger was morally a lost cause. theological and mystical questions. The chapters on Carl Schmitt and Despairing of a fallen, materialistic world, Alexander Kojeve are of particular interest. full of evil and suffering, and lacking in The Reckless Mind: Neither thinker is well-known in the spiritual beliefs and values, many turned Intellectuals in Politics Anglo-Saxon world, though their influence to radical political doctrines and parties as a Mark Lilla on European thought was and is profound. way of correcting the imperfections of the The New York Review of Books, Schmitt came from a bourgeois Catholic world. Many concluded that these 2001, 230pp, $US24.95 background and rose to become one of the imperfections could only be eradicated via ISBN 0940 322765 chief legal experts of the Third Reich, the cleansing fire of totalitarian defending the concept of the dictatorship, which would force the human IN HIS book, Capturing the Culture, Fuhrerprinzip as a necessary measure in the race into conformity with their version of American film critic Richard Grenier made so-called war against the Jews. the ideal world. the comment that the West’s cultural and Schmitt’s continued intellectual As Orwell made clear in his classic novel intellectual elites ‘find this society morally influence on the German Right is 1984, totalitarianism was a new religion wretched, in fact, miserably lacking in the extraordinary given his Nazi record. What for many, who hoped it would usher in shining values that give life meaning’. This is even more extraordinary is the interest of the Millennium of peace and plenty for statement is borne out in Mark Lilla’s book, the radical New Left in Germany who seem the human race. By replacing the union of The Reckless Mind, which studies the lives to have adopted him as an important humanity with God at the end of time, of some of the 20th century’s most thinker, drawn to his scathing attacks on totalitarian doctrines sought to build the prominent intellectuals and thinkers, and liberalism and democracy. perfect society in the present, rescuing a their adherence to totalitarian doctrines and Unknown outside France, Alexander fallen humanity through radical measures attitudes. Kojeve was the son of middle-class Russian and state-sanctioned programmes. Consisting of essays, which originally parents who fled Russia in the wake of the Following Plato, Lilla argues that appeared in the New York Review of Books October Revolution in 1917, despite his intellectuals need to restrain their love for and The Times Literary Supplement, Lilla’s own conversion to communism. Attracted abstract virtues, and realise that the Good book studies the lives of eight prominent to radical political and mystical doctrines, will never be implemented in an imperfect thinkers. The chapters deal with Carl and an ardent admirer of Stalin, Kojeve world. The Philosopher King must learn Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexander expounded a strange philosophy that to rule over his own inner world before he Kojeve, Michel Foucault and Jacques combined Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and can hope to have any influence on the Derrida. A long opening chapter looks at Nietzsche to a small audience of left-wing outside world. And what must the the intellectual love affair between Martin intellectuals in Paris in the 1930s. intellectuals do when a society refuses to Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Hannah Announcing the End of History, Kojeve accept the philosopher’s account of the True Arendt. The concluding chapter, ‘The Lure preached the death of nobility and human and the Beautiful? According to Lilla, Plato of Syracuse’, analyses the nature of what greatness, and saw as inevitable the triumph counsels withdrawal, maintaining a critical Lilla calls the philotyrannical mind in the of the universal and homogenous state, distance and awaiting more hopeful times. 20th century. which he identified with the liberal Along with Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals The chapter on Heidegger, Jaspers and capitalist West. His teachings influenced a and Tony Judt’s The Burden of Arendt beautifully evokes the intellectual whole generation of French thinkers, and Responsibility, Lilla’s book is a worthy friendship that can develop when people contributed greatly to the rise of contribution to the philosophical history share a love of philosophy. This relationship existentialism and postmodernism in the of the 20th century and of Western broke down, however, when Heidegger postwar world. intellectuals. attached himself closely to the Nazi Party Perhaps the most fascinating chapter is in the early 1930s, joining the party openly the final one, in which Lilla seeks to rescue Reviewed by Martin Sheehan in 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor. the idea of the intellectual from the moral Jaspers, in particular, tried to convince his relativism and totalitarianism that many of Autumn 2002 61.