Ignorance and Bliss

On Wanting Not to Know

by Mark Lilla

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Pub Date Dec 03 2024 | Archive Date Jan 03 2025

Description

"Mark Lilla is always a challenging, fascinating mind – alert to all the power, paradox, and dangers of ignorance." —Rory Stewart, author of Politics On the Edge and co-host of The Rest Is Politics

A dazzling exploration of our wish to remain innocent and ignorant—and its consequences.

Aristotle claimed that “all human beings want to know.” Our own experience proves that all human beings also want not to know. Today, centuries after the Enlightenment, mesmerized crowds still follow preposterous prophets, irrational rumors trigger fanatical acts, and magical thinking crowds out common sense and expertise. Why is this? Where does this will to ignorance come from, and how does it continue to shape our lives?

In Ignorance and Bliss, the acclaimed essayist and historian of ideas Mark Lilla offers 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. He also exposes the fantasies this impulse lead us to entertain—the illusion that the ecstasies of prophets, mystics, and holy fools offer access to esoteric truths; the illusion of children’s lamb-like innocence; and the nostalgic illusion of recapturing the glories of vanished and allegedly purer civilizations. The result is a highly original meditation that invites readers to consider their own deep-seated impulses and taboos.

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.

A Note From the Publisher

Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics; The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction; The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West; and The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. He lives in New York City.

Mark Lilla is Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other publications worldwide. His books include The Once and Future...

Advance Praise

“Lilla is a fluid, perceptive, and engaging essayist . . . The enjoyment of the book is in experiencing a supple mind and lucid writer. A welcome reminder that ignorance is not the antithesis of knowledge but essential to self-knowledge.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Lilla’s conversational foray through a broad array of religious, philosophical, and historical examples produces many surprising, thought-provoking insights . . . This will provide the intellectually curious with more than enough to chew on." —Publishers Weekly

"Insurance companies, along with many other institutions, are in the business of calculating how long you are likely to live. But if a genie offered to tell you the exact year and month and day that you were going to die, you would almost certainly shrink back and refuse the offer. In this tour de force, Mark Lilla explores the deep sources of this refusal. An exuberant, inexhaustible storyteller, Lilla finds the hidden, self-protective will to ignorance at the center of our most cherished religious myths, philosophical systems, and literary masterpieces." —Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve and The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

"Ignorance is bliss, a poet once said, and Mark Lilla offers us a learned, humane and astringent guide to our incorrigible attachment to ignorance and our wavering commitment to truth. At a time when our politics is debauched with lies and fake news, Lilla asks a question which challenges our alibis: what if the root of the problem lies not with our leaders, but with us?" —Michael Ignatieff, professor at Central European University and author of On Consolation

"Ever since Aristotle, philosophers have assumed that human beings want to know the truth about the world and themselves. What if this is an illusion? Gleaning insights from ancient myths and modern novels, Saint Augustine, Sigmund Freud, and a rich variety of other thinkers and writers, Mark Lilla argues compellingly that a will to ignorance is as strong in human beings as any interest in knowledge. Writing with admirable clarity and subtle charm, Lilla gives us a highly original study of what our desire not to know means for our lives." —John Gray, author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism

"In these murky days when we all seem to be at sea, Mark Lilla's elegant and perceptive handbook serves both as a compass and a hopeful sail." —Alberto Manguel, author of Maimonides and A History of Reading

“Lilla is a fluid, perceptive, and engaging essayist . . . The enjoyment of the book is in experiencing a supple mind and lucid writer. A welcome reminder that ignorance is not the antithesis of...