Toqueville’s Materialism
Mark Lilla
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Mark Lilla was educated at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. After holding professorships at New York University and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he joined Columbia University in 2007 as Professor of the Humanities wherein he specializes in intellectual history, with a particular focus on Western political and religious thought. His courses include The Modern Self, Enlightenment and Its Critics, and Themes in Intellectual History.
Lilla has been awarded fellowships by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institut d’Etudes 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, Liberties, and publications worldwide. His books include The Stillborn God, The Reckless Mind, The Shipwrecked Mind, and most recently Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know (2024).
Professor Lilla’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.