The Reckless Mind Quotes

“When Heidegger returned to teaching after his escapade as Nazi rector, one of his colleagues famously quipped, “Back from Syracuse?” The reference, of course, is to the three expeditions Plato made to Sicily in hopes of turning the young ruler Dionysius to philosophy and justice. The education failed, Dionysius remained a tyrant, and Plato barely escaped with his life. The parallel has been invoked more than once in discussions of Heidegger, the implication being that his tragicomic error was to have momentarily believed that philosophy could guide politics, especially the gutter politics of National Socialism.”
― Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics: Revised Edition

“Lehet, hogy az átfogó ideológiák kora leáldozott, de amíg csak emberek politikáról gondolkodnak - amíg csak egyáltalán lesznek gondolkodó emberek -, mindig ott lesz a kísértés, hogy behódoljunk egy-egy eszme csábításának, hogy a szenvedélytől elvakulva ne vegyük észre a leselkedő zsarnokságot, hogy ne vegyünk tudomást legelső kötelességünkről: a zsarnokot magunkban kell legyőzni.”
― Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics

“Like any other political doctrine, liberalism makes assumptions about things human and divine, and these assumptions are, and ought to remain, open to disinterested reflection. Those who seriously question such assumptions are not wrong to do so and their arguments must be engaged. But for nearly two centuries now, the advocates of liberal ideas have also found themselves confronted by opponents like Schmitt, who are so convinced that the modern age represents a cosmic mistake that they are willing to consider any extreme, intellectual or political, to correct it.”
― Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics: Revised Edition

“Love evokes in us all an unconscious memory of the beauty of the Ideas, and this memory maddens us; we feel possessed by a frenzied yearning to couple and to “beget in the beautiful,” as”
― Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics: Revised Edition