Ignorancia y felicidad : Sobre el deseo de no saber

Aristotle stated that "all human beings desire to know." However, we also wish the opposite. We want to know the truth… and at the same time protect ourselves from it. Centuries after the Enlightenment, we continue to be fascinated by absurd prophets, irrational rumors continue to cause fanatical acts, and magical thinking prevails over common sense and experience. Where does this will to ignorance come from? In Ignorance and Bliss, acclaimed essayist and historian Mark Lilla offers a diagnosis of the human tendency to self-conceal the truth. To do this, it covers a vast intellectual arc that goes from the Book of Genesis and the Platonic dialogues to Sufi parables and psychoanalysis, revealing the paradoxes of our resistance to knowledge. Lilla also examines the fantasies that fuel this impulse: the belief that the ecstasies of prophets, mystics, and saints offer access to esoteric truths; the illusion that we can preserve an almost childlike innocence and nostalgia for civilizations that have disappeared, imagined as purer. The result is an original reflection that invites readers to recognize their own impulses and taboos rooted where the mind oscillates between accepting the truth and resisting it.