Mark Lilla: «We must remain vigilant about our blind spots»

Mark Lilla is considered one of the leading contemporary historians of ideas. From the rise of identity politics to the limits of rationalism, this American scholar has spent several decades examining the intellectual forces shaping the West.

Surrounded by stacks of books that seem to have taken over every corner of his New York office, Mark Lilla immediately gives the impression of belonging to an endangered intellectual species: that of historians of ideas capable of moving with equal ease from Aristotle to Donald Trump, from John Stuart Mill to the American culture wars.

A professor at Columbia University for two decades, he has become known far beyond the academic world for his essays on the excesses of identity politics, the allure of ideologies, and the missteps of modern intellectuals. For *Le Regard Libre*, he