The Shipwrecked Mind is many things, including inconsistently fascinating and incredibly useful in the contemporary political atmosphere. It has something of Albert Hirschman in it (which is a tremendous compliment). Others have discussed it, including an NYT review here and Tyler Cowen here. Here is the anti-reactionary FAQ, from 2013 and over long but relevant to The Shipwrecked Mind; the title itself tells us something of Lilla’s sympathies or perspective. The book is consistently surprising, as when we learn that philosopher Leo Strauss liked using “Dear Abby” columns as teaching devices (that he did speaks well of him: maybe he had a strong grasp on the texture of real life than most philosophers seem to).

Some sections are just wildly good, like this paragraph, which I wish I’d written:

Successful ideologies follow a certain trajectory. They are first developed in narrow sects whose adherents share obsessions and principles, and see themselves as voices in the wilderness. To have any political effect, though, these groups must learn to work together. That’s difficult for obsessive, principled people, which is why at the political fringes one always finds little factions squabbling futilely with each other. But for an ideology to really reshape politics it must cease being a set of principles and become instead a vaguer general outlook that new information and events only strengthen. You really know when an ideology has matured when every event, present and past, is taken as confirmation of it.

These groups must also expand their size and scope, and convince others, none of which are easy: Most people are not ideological (or they are subconsciously ideological) and just don’t care. People who really care about and attempt to implement ideology in their own life are rare. Many also espouse an ideology but live contrary to it; socialists for example rarely got past this challenge.

There are many lines of the sort that explain why it’s hard for me to take philosophy seriously, like, “We live inauthentically because of Socrates” (note that this is not Lilla’s view; he is describing another’s view, accurately I hope). The section on Eric Voegelin is probably over-long, at least in my view, and it is hard to imagine him and his writings having so much influence on later reactionary thought. Or maybe I just find some of Voegelin’s claims ridiculous, like, his argument in The New Science of Politics, as articulated by Lilla: “the entire modern age, which grew out of a rebellion against Christianity, was gnostic in nature.” What? I’d argue that the modern age has grown out of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, with technical breakthroughs leading the way to social or cultural ones.

Still, Voegelin does eventually renounce his earlier thought, and until 1974 his “works were like those of other antimodern cultural pessimists who since the nineteenth century have constructed historical narratives presuming to pinpoint the moment when healthy modes of thinking and living were abandoned and the rot began.” Lilla’s list of those thinkers and their various answers is impressive, and it also points to the ridiculousness of the concept itself because of the variety of answers given and rationales behind those answers.

Later, in “From Luther to Walmart” (my favorite chapter), Lilla writes:

It is a revealing psychological fact that the most common historical myths with which early civilizations comforted themselves were stories of fated decline, which give temporal reasons for why life is so hard. We suffer because we live in the Age of Iron, far removed from our origins in the Age of Gold. If we are good perhaps one day the gods will smile down and return us to the world we have lost.

I don’t think I’ve ever bought the myth of the golden age; getting specific about what prior time one would like to live tends to kill it. Today is not perfect, but few of us choose to even attempt to give it up—not for any length of time, at least. I am reminded of the very end of Philip Pullman’s anti-reaction His Dark Materials Trilogy:

“We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and brave and patient, and we’ve got to study and think, and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…”
“And then what? […] Build what?”
“The republic of heaven.”

In Pullman’s reading, we don’t get handed heaven (or much else). We make it for ourselves or don’t get it at all. A thrilling conclusion, in my view, and too uncommon, which is part of what makes it stand out.

Few if any of the writers in The Shipwrecked Mind seem to take this sunny view. It is perhaps telling that sunny views seem common in the tech industry and uncommon in the philosophy industry. A longer essay might explain why, but for now I will post the question.

Oddly at times I find myself thinking of The Shipwrecked Mind, “Does any of this shit matter in comparison to pop culture?”

I don’t think I got enough out of it in the first pass, which is a good sign.