Mark Lilla

Author, "Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know" | American political scientist, journalist | Professor of Humanities at Columbia University
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Mark Lilla is an American political scientist,  journalist, and Professor of Humanities at Columbia University.
In his newest book, Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know, an absorbing psychological diagnosis of the human will not to know. With erudition and brio, Lilla ranges from the Book of Genesis and Plato’s dialogues to Sufi parables and Sigmund Freud, revealing the paradoxes of hiding truth from ourselves. We want to know, we want not to know. We accept truth, we resist truth. Back and forth the mind shuttles, playing badminton with itself. But it doesn’t feel like a game. It feels as if our lives are at stake. And they are.

In his previous book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, Lilla offers an urgent wake-up call to American liberals to turn from the divisive politics of identity and develop a vision of our future that can persuade all citizens that they share a common destiny. He is also the author of The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, which was was named one of the "100 best books of the year" by the New York Times Book Review; The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, and G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. 

After holding professorships at New York University and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he joined Columbia University as Professor of the Humanities specializing in intellectual history, with a focus on Western political and religious thought. He has been awarded fellowships by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institut d’études avancées (Paris), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the American Academy in Rome. In 1995, he was inducted into the French Order of Academic Palms.

Lilla is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, and publications worldwide. In 2015, Overseas Press Club of America awarded him its prize for Best Commentary on International News in Any Medium.

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Mark Lilla

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'Ignorance and Bliss' Review: To Know or Not to Know
The Wall Street Journal
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The Surprising Allure of Ignorance
New York Times
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'Ignorance and Bliss' argures knowledge isn't always worth seeking
The Washington Post
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The End of Identity Liberalsim
New York Times

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