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Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky

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Paul Johnson examines whether intellectuals are morally fit to give advice to humanity.
Do the private practices of intellectuals match the standard of their public principles?
How great is their respect for truth? What is their attitude to money? How do they treat their spouses and children - legitimate and illegitimate? How loyal are they to their friends?
Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, Kenneth Tynan and many others are put under the spotlight. With wit and brilliance, Paul Johnson exposes these intellectuals, and questions whether ideas should ever be valued more than individuals.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

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About the author

Paul Johnson

130 books806 followers
Paul Johnson works as a historian, journalist and author. He was educated at Stonyhurst School in Clitheroe, Lancashire and Magdalen College, Oxford, and first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for, and later editing, the New Statesman magazine. He has also written for leading newspapers and magazines in Britain, the US and Europe.

Paul Johnson has published over 40 books including A History of Christianity (1979), A History of the English People (1987), Intellectuals (1988), The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815—1830 (1991), Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the Year 2000 (1999), A History of the American People (2000), A History of the Jews (2001) and Art: A New History (2003) as well as biographies of Elizabeth I (1974), Napoleon (2002), George Washington (2005) and Pope John Paul II (1982).

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Profile Image for Greg.
1,128 reviews2,097 followers
September 3, 2012
Back in 2001 I had an internship at Verso. They are the publishers of some left-wing books. When I worked there I would come in for a few hours a day. I'd get paid twenty five dollars and I'd be given lunch. I was also allowed to take home copies of any books that I wanted. It was a pleasant arrangement while I was taking classes.

One day, probably a couple of months after I started I showed up at the office and one of the real employees pulled me aside and told me that Alexander Cockburn was in the office today, and warned me not to give him any of my money. I remember thinking the warning a little weird, why would a fairly well-known author come after me for my money, of which I had almost none? But sure enough, when he came storming out of the editor's office, with his shirt half-unbuttoned like he was about to go storm some barricades he charged up to me and tried hitting me up for money. I think the way he asked it was, "Do you have any money, I need to have some money." I told him no. He started fuming about the unfairness about how he got paid. He asked me again for money later on, and left the office after raiding the petty cash, which was the money that was used to buy me my daily lunch. A few days later, a week maybe? I got asked if I wanted to sell his books at a reading he was doing at ABC No Rio. I said sure, and with a backpack full of books I went, met up with Cockburn, set up a little display and sat my ass down while a bunch of punk types milled about, looked at the books, grumbled about the prices and waited for the lecture. When I was setting up the books, Cockburn grumbled about the price that I was going to charge for the books. He wanted to charge more, I think we were selling them for half the cover price. After the lecture and when the punk kids were milling about the table again and complaining about the price, Cockburn tried to throw me under the bus by saying how he wanted to charge less for the book but it wasn't up to him. I fielded some accusations from the grumbling punks and I think in the end we sold a couple of books.

This is a fairly banal example, but having someone trying to bully my lunch money out of me who is a supposed defender of the working class and enemy of greedy corporations struck me as kind of ridiculous. But, I've also realized that it's not all that uncommon, if you spend much time finding out about writers you admire you are probably going to come across some disappointments in their character. If you've ever had the fortune of going to school and being taught by 'rock-star' academics, maybe you've even discovered that you are basically in the company of a whole group of people with all sorts of anti-social behaviors that wouldn't fly in the real world.

This book is sort of like an In Touch magazine for a certain type of book nerd. It's almost all dirt. The gossip about famous intellectuals, all with the question behind the stories of, why do these people think they have the right to tell everyone else how they should act?

The book has a conservative bias. The people being skewered all are of the left-ist persuasion, but it is still a juicy and fun read, because who doesn't like see the ugly side of famous people, especially famous people who might have a tendency to be holier-than-thou, condemn others and feel that they have some big insight into the world that has given them all the answers.

The book was written in the waning days of the Cold War, right as the thaw was about to set in, and it's difficult at times to keep that fact in mind as reading some of the things here. Some of the book has aged a little poorly, for example Lillian Hellman had just recently died and Johnson predicted that her cult would live on. I don't think anyone these days gives two shits about Hellman's politics, and she might have ruled over the New York intellectual scene at one point, but now she's just that woman who has one copy of a couple of her plays carried in Barnes and Noble and is remembered for her legendary spat with Mary McCarthy.

The overarching criticism leveled at most of the people featured in this book is that they profess a great love for humanity, they are self-described as being filled with love and compassion, a sense of justice, an outrage at exploitation, etc; but in their personal lives they show very little compassion, they treat other people like garbage, they have a tendency to almost pathologically lie, and (this isn't surprising) they have that parental problem of basically saying, do as I say not as I do.

The writers who get their lives scrutinized here? This is a rough list: Rousseau, Shelly, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz (yeah I didn't know who he was either), Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, George Orwell (sort of), Norman Mailer, Rainer Fassbinder (yeah, not a writer), James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan and Noam Chomsky.

Before I get into some of the dirt, I should make a few comments on some of these selections. One, a few of them probably shouldn't have been included. I think it's a real stretch of the imagination to call Hemingway an 'intellectual'. He dabbled in being committed to the CP in the 1930's, but he wasn't really out there creating over-arching ideas about how society should be run. Johnson seems to feel the discomfort of including him, and seems to rationalize his inclusion because of Hemingway's 'pagan' life-style. Atheism is something that Johnson isn't too fond of. I already mentioned Hellman. Chomsky is also a curious inclusion, he seems to be included mainly for his political stance but there is little 'dirt' given, except for an example of some questionable justifications he gave and revised over genocide in Cambodia (It's not happening, It's not as bad as they say, It did happen but it's Americas fault). Edmund Wilson is at best a fellow traveller of the CP, and even during his infatuation with Communism he stands apart from most of the other people featured in this book by staying intellectually honest. Bunny falls into the same problem that is easily leveled at a lot of left-wing people in the 30's, they choose to support Communism without an awareness of what Stalin was doing to his own people at the time. Many would have serious misgivings about Stalin as it became difficult to ignore the facts of his brutality. Except in the case of someone like Sartre who went against the stream and didn't give a shit about the CP when it was fashionable, but threw his hat in to support Stalin as everyone else was backing away and feeling slightly ashamed of themselves.

My two favorite chapters were probably the ones attacking Rousseau and Tolstoy. Maybe it's because they are probably two of the most inflated examples of moral self-righeousness presented in the book. It's not really surprising to hear how say, Brecht was an asshole, or that Hemingway was a drunk. It was curious to hear that Marx had probably never stepped foot in a factory in his whole life, and that much of the facts he used in Capital were from decades old government reports that didn't reflect on what present working conditions were like, and that maybe the only exploited laborer he knew personally was his maid who he impregnated, forced the child into an orphanage and oh yeah, who was never paid a cent for the work she did in the Marx home. Opps.

I thought maybe I'd relate a bunch of episodes from various lives but now I'm having some trouble deciding what to pick. There is so much slanderous gossip here, much of it taken from letters and journals of the authors.

You do get quite a bit of strange dishonesty from the authors portrayed here. For example, there is Bertrand Russell angrily denying that he ever advocated using nuclear weapons to destroy the Soviet Union in the days before they developed their own atomic weapons, even in the face of being shown that he had written articles and essays advocating this (at least one of them he even published in his collection, Unpopular Essays. Another common theme is bizarre sexually open relationships with spouses, it's not necessarily bizarre that someone would want to sleep with people other then their spouse, but the number of the intellectuals in the book who followed this practice and didn't just cheat, but did it with an 'openness' policy that results in probably more hurtfulness than if the infidelity had been carried out in a more traditional bourgeois manner.

Maybe someday soon I'll return to this review. It's fun reading though for people who want to have a dosage of some gossip but can't read the weekly Hollywood gossip magazines because they are too culturally stupid to know who half of the people on the covers of them are.
Profile Image for Valeriu Gherghel.
Author 6 books1,979 followers
June 1, 2021
Dacă vom citi acest volum numai pentru amănuntele biografice bizare sau hazlii, nu cred că-i vom înțelege întru totul mesajul. E drept că și autorul a exagerat. Multe amănunte par îndoielnice, apocrife.

Unii „intelectuali” nu-și aveau locul în acest insectar: Ernest Hemingway, Cyril Connolly. Alții nu mi se par relevanți: Victor Gollancz, Kenneth Tynan etc. Detest bîrfa. Cartea nu m-a amuzat deloc. În fond, orice om (de la prinț la cerșetor) are dreptul la ridicol. Nimeni nu e inteligent 24 de ore din 24.

Altceva mi-a atras atenția. Credința unor înțelepți că pot povățui omenirea numai pentru faptul că au devenit foarte cunoscuți (ca scriitori, filosofi etc.). Notorietatea trezește adeseori în oameni senzația de infailibilitate, de atotputernicie, de competență universală. Modest și cumpănit o vreme, individul notoriu devine brusc agitat, mitoman și ofensiv. Inițiază petiții. Se adresează regilor, hanilor, țarilor, ducilor, președinților. Sfătuiește popoarele. Acest salt psihologic de la minus la plus (de la alb la negru) m-a uimit dintotdeauna.

Mult mai interesant mi se pare cazul intelectualilor care și-au păstrat cumpătul și bunul simț în pofida zarvei și gloriei. Nu toți o iau razna. Și nu toți își pierd mințile. Cred că ar fi meritat și ei o carte...

Volumul lui PJ se cuvine completat cu alte titluri:
- Juien Benda, Trădarea cărturarilor / La trahison des clercs – 1927 (volum tradus încă din 1993 la Humanitas)
- Mark Lilla, Spiritul nesăbuit: Intelectualii în politică Spiritul nesăbuit: Intelectualii în politică / The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics - 2003 (carte tradusă în 2005 la Polirom),
- Neven Sesardić, Când rațiunea pleacă în vacanță: filozofii în politică / When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics - 2016 (tradusă în 2019 la Humanitas).

P. S. Bertrand Russell îi scrie o misivă lui Hrusciov, iar Hrusciov are umorul să-i răspundă (p.304):)
Profile Image for Peter Jones.
629 reviews116 followers
March 18, 2015
A book that is devastating to many of those that modern thinkers hold in high esteem, such as Rousseau, Marx, Tolstoy, Sarte and Brecht. Johnson knows a lot, has studied a lot, and is willing to call these men (and one woman) what they were: mean, greedy for fame and often money, immoral, hateful towards women and children, and above all persistent liars. Truth for them was malleable, especially when their reputation was at stake.

One reviewer said that Johnson ignored their good contributions, which is not true. He notes that if Tolstoy has stuck to writing he would have been fine. He says that Hemingway's devotion to his craft was unsurpassed. But the point of the book is that they did not just write or speak. They thought they were messiahs who had some special destiny to guide humanity in truth. The theme is not what they did well, but how their lives were staunchly immoral, despite their accomplishments.

As I look around our world the thoughts and ideas of these men still echo, but it has shifted to Hollywood. Today it is not philosophy professors or even playwrights who shape thinking, but actors, directors, and the movies they make. Fascination with sexual freedom, the love of money, the shading of the truth in the name of Humanity, the desire to identify with the workers, excusing violence when it accomplishes their ends, and the vicious intolerance of all opposing viewpoints was characteristic of intellectuals and is now characteristic of Hollywood and our ruling class in general.

Unfortunately, Johnson's book assumes, what can no longer be assumed, a standard of right and wrong that has long since be lost. Most who read it today will be fascinated, but ultimately will say, "So what that Hemingway was a drunk adulterer? Who cares that Marx lied? Who cares that men claimed to be pacifists, but often supported violence to accomplish their goals? What is that to me? I like their books and their ideas and their movies. And isn't my opinion and feelings what really matters?" That response goes to show that, at least in America and Europe, the intellectuals have won.
Profile Image for Beauregard Bottomley.
1,168 reviews795 followers
November 18, 2019
This is not a book about why each of the profiled intellectuals profiled are worthy of being remembered, but it's mostly how they are flawed human beings. The author would pick an intellectual, barely explain why they are important today, and then dwell on the persons foibles to a churlish degree making the listener lose sight of why the person is of interest today.

Does the author really know that Marx had "anger in his heart" but didn't really act on it? Sometimes it can help to understand the artist (philosopher, writer, poet,...) as an individual and how they are different from their art but not at the expense of understanding why we should know about them today. Give me the complete package of the intellectuals but don't think you've denigrated their body of work by denigrating the person. Hemingway was a dick, but boy, could he write! We know him for his writing not for his life. Yes, we can better understand his writing by understanding the man, but his dickish behavior doesn't negate his writing.

I really despised this approach to story telling. It was not about what the intellectuals thought or why they are special. It is about why they are flawed humans. (Besides is it really flawed not to believe in supernatural transcendental beings based on no real evidence? The author seemed to think most of his subjects were flawed because they saw the world in human terms. Whatever).

Using the author's modus operandi, I could explain how he would describe the great intellectual thinker Jesus. He would first say something about the sermon on the mount and the golden rule and how that revolutionized thought, and then he would say that Jesus said he came to separate families, went to a temple and kicked out money lenders and violently whipped them, and suggested people not wash their hands before eating even though germs can cause disease. Then the author would end the story by casting more doubt on Jesus' intellectual works because of his personnel behavior since when his mother and brothers ask him for help he shouted "who is my mother, who are my brothers" (Matthew 12:48). (The author really seemed to like taking things out of context and I had a feeling that he was more interested in telling his point of view if it supported his dislike for the person with the implication that the art itself is just as bad).

I did not finish the book. I finish almost all of my books, but enough was enough. I thought he would change his formula. But he did not. If I weren't so lazy I would have gotten my credit back on this anti-intellectual, anti-humanist bore of a book.
Profile Image for Dfordoom.
434 reviews122 followers
March 12, 2012
Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals is a fascinating examination of the reasons we should distrust intellectuals, especially of the left-wing variety.

He looks at a selection of intellectuals from Rousseau to Noam Chomsky and sees some disturbing common patterns. They achieve a certain eminence in a particular field (Bertrand Russell in mathematics, Chomsky in linguistics, Shelley, Tolstoy and James Baldwin in literature) and then decide they are uniquely qualified to refashion civilisation. They turn to politics but their knowledge of the real world is dangerously shallow and naïve, and they are led into a complex web of deception and self-deception.

Since their understanding of the world of politics and of the behaviours and motivations of real people are fatally inadequate they succumb to the temptation to ignore real people and the real world and to put ideas before people. When people fail to react in the desired manner the intellectuals become embittered and increasingly extreme.

Believing that they have all the answers they convince themselves that they do not need to bother with troublesome distractions like facts, and that they are justified in lying in the service of the higher truths that they have glimpsed.

Lying becomes second nature to them. An almost total disregard for truthfulness can be observed in all the intellectuals under discussion. Rousseau, Marx, the left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman and Bertolt Brecht are merely the most egregious examples.

Hypocrisy, selfishness and vicious behaviour towards other people is another common thread, most spectacular in the cases of Shelley, Hemingway and Norman Mailer but present in all to some extent. The intellectual seems to be a person unable to progress beyond adolescence, which explains not only their childish behaviours but also their willingness to embrace remarkable silly ideas (Marx and Tolstoy being classic examples)

Some (Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) are so sad and pathetic one almost feels sorry for them while others (Shelley, Lillian Hellman and Brecht) are truly repellant.

Johnson also notes the increasing tendency of intellectuals to embrace violence, most notable in the cases of Mailer and James Baldwin, and associated with that a frightening willingness to make excuses for barbarism (Lillian Hellman’s enthusiasm for Stalinism being a particularly shameful example).

There really is nothing more dangerous than an intellectual with a plan to remake the world.
Profile Image for Riku Sayuj.
658 reviews7,566 followers
July 26, 2016

Single Quote Review:

“The famous technique of not separating the author from his work which made him* the leading critic of the nineteenth century ignores what should be obvious to anyone upon reflection, that a book is produced by a different person than the one whom we see in his daily life with his strengths and his weaknesses as a man.”

~ Marcel Proust



[ *him - refers to the French critic Sainte-Beuve, who had inspired a school of critics in the nineteenth century, l’homme et l’oeuvre, which devoted as much study to a writer’s life and letters as to his actual writing in order to form an understanding of his work. ]
Profile Image for Jan.
49 reviews70 followers
March 22, 2015
A disappointing book. Paul Johnson, a Conservative writer for the Spectator, presents a very one-sided picture of Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemmingway, Brecht, Russell, Sartre, Wilson, Gollancz, Hellman, Mailer, Baldwin, Chomsky and others.

Very condescending and even disdainful with little effort at balance by ignoring their many positive contributions. Johnson is given to sweeping statements; one example: ‘. . . a disregard for the truth . . . marks the true secular intellectual.’ What?

Johnson examines the sex lives and the hygiene habits of a select group of people, relying almost entirely on secondary sources – that is, what others have said about them. Much of this, even if true, (dirt under finger nails, etc.) is unbelievable banal. And, his selected group of ‘intellectuals’ are all liberal leaning – where is the mention of a Heidegger or a Pound or other conservative leaning thinkers?

But what should we have expected? As a staunch conservative, Johnson opposed Nixon’s impeachment yet supported Clinton’s while he was himself involved in an eleven-year affair during his marriage. (We know this is true because his mistress, Gloria Stewart, said she finally she had to go public because she was so offended by Johnson’s moral hypocrisy. Johnson was then forced to admit the affair.) More recently, as a strong Catholic, in an interview he questioned the veracity of complaints about pedophilic priests.

And where does Johnson lead us in his book? He concludes that we must look at the moral credentials of intellectuals before accepting any advice on how to lead our lives. I don’t know how to address this point – should we really ignore the writings of individuals who had flaws in their lives? How much of their insights may come from their own life experience? Or should we listen to Lawrence when he said trust the tale, not the teller?

In fairness and in an effort to have balance, Mr. Johnson is a learned man, a journalist who writes well. Before he was a conservative, he was a liberal and wrote for the New Statesman. Wherever he wrote, he appeared to have had an active filter to interpret what he saw in the world to agree with his strongly held positions. Other writers may have struggled harder to be objective.

If you have an interest in the personal lives of some of the more notable modern philosophers, I would suggest Nigel Rodgers and Mel Thompson’s Philosophers Behaving Badly for a more even handed presentation.
Profile Image for Eric_W.
1,945 reviews420 followers
July 4, 2013
Paul Hollander, in a review of Intellectuals by Paul Johnson defines "intellectual" as a western concept connoting "preoccupation with and respect for ideas but not for ideas as sacred doctrines." (Society, Se/Oc 1989, p. 97)

The positive embodiment of this ideal is the "fearless social critic, inquisitive and iconoclastic interpreter of ideas, selfless promoter of the common good." To some extent, the role of intellectual is self-defined; there are no specific requirements for the job, unlike that the cleric. In Intellectuals, Johnson denounces the replacement of the cleric by the intellectual. According to Johnson, the cleric played the role of intellectual prior to the decline of religious institutions in the 18th century. He contends this is a "dangerous" trend. In his book he attempts to display the vast gulf between progressive ideas and personal morality.

His selection of intellectuals for study is peculiar. Hemingway, for one, may have been a genius, but he certainly was not an intellectual of the caliber of Rousseau or Marx or Tolstoy who are also included. Nor are Hellman, or Chomsky or Gollancz. Johnson obviously suffers from the delusion that those who dispense moral advice need to follow their own prescriptions. Since when have clerics been any more upright than others? I would also argue that there are many religiously trained intellectuals writing today. Johnson's selections seem to have been chosen more for their apparent antagonism to capitalistic society.

While eminently readable, if you like gossip, Johnson spends little time on the philosophies of his victims, emphasizing instead their apparent lack of personal morality (at least morality that Johnson supports).

Johnson's flaw is attributing too much power to intellectuals. For example, he writes of Rousseau's distrust of capitalism and private property, declaims Rousseau's enormous influence on society, and then warns us of his dangerous thinking. Oh really? I haven't noticed any great decline in our desire for accumulating wealth or property. Even the National Review decided this book was too gossipy and replete with overblown generalizations. But a little slander is fun too.

Profile Image for Szplug.
466 reviews1,467 followers
February 23, 2011
As other reviews have pointed out, Johnson has selected a mitt-full of left-wing/atheist writers, thinkers, and philosophers and attempted to sully their names and reputations with copious slinging of mud. Each intellectual - and there are some curious inclusions under this rubric - has their (personal) life strained for gossip and innuendo: the resulting sexual shenanigans, neurotic peccadillos, rampant paranoia, unpleasant interactions and general grade-A assholery apparently should serve as a caution against people taking any of these crumblebums and/or their self-proclaimed ideologies seriously. It's trial by smearing, eighties style.

It's all a rather loathsome business, but Johnson, despite clearly having axes to grind with these roseate bedfellows, has churned the milk of scandal into a deliciously entertaining butter. He's a fantastic writer - his History of the American People , though again marred by the rigor of his dogmatic filter (slavery gently deplored but explainable, the New Deal a diabolic scheme to enslave), is an exercise in sheer reading pleasure - and well able to maximize both the outrage and the amusement quotient in the dross engendered from such larger-than-life personalities. Quite titillating by any measure, but a little does go a long way.
Profile Image for Brian Goldstein.
15 reviews2 followers
April 21, 2012
Magnificent, all the emeperors without clothes, about time these rascals were exposed for the frauds they were!
Profile Image for Frieda Vizel.
184 reviews119 followers
November 14, 2012
I read every word of this juicy book even though I lost trust in the author very early on. The book reads like a delicious tabloid writeup of the venerated thinkers; sex, drugs, drinking, mental illness, theft, fighting and a plethora of other personal scandal depicted with questionable reliability. If nothing else, this book feeds our personal cravings for schadenfreude. Johnson loses his credibility when the faults he finds in these thinkers - which at times seem quite human and expected - are depicted with extreme words like "preposterous, ridiculous, gruesome, promiscuous, dreadful, pathetic" and on the basis of small excerpts from their writings or a single sexual episode. He hardly tells you why these individuals are so prominent in our history, except if you believe him, by virtue of their exploitative, hypersexual, corrupt and immoral nature. If you never read the works of these Intellectuals or read a more balanced biography you may quickly be left to wonder why these intellectuals ever achieved acclaim. The positive accomplishments of the intellectuals are hardly expanded on.

Johnson explains this approach with his theory that the icon's personal life is key to understanding the public life, and there is no doubt that this is truth to his philosophy. But from that premise Johnson zooms in almost exclusively on the personal life, dishing about wives, ex-wives, mistresses, sexual exploits, fetishes, in two instances the intellectual's "obsession" with his penis. While all of these would be fascinating and an indulgent read, Johnson comes off so disingenuous that at times he seems more preposterous than the intellectual he's trying to paint as such. Every good thing that is said or done by the intellectual is hyper-analyzed to discover the evil underpinnings, while every bad thing (often related by ex wives) are taken at face value, no analysis needed.

What is most troubling about this book is that it pretends to be a book about individuals. In reality, this is a book about the general Intellectual archetype as defined by Johnson: the secular leader and reformer who is the equivalent of the religious leader (priest, rabbi, imam etc) but without the religious element. Johnson's aim was not to compile a number of biographies, but to prove an overarching theme: that "intellectuals", meaning, secular moral leaders, are not trustworthy. If I had understood this thesis before I read the book perhaps I wouldn't have been so astounded by Johnson's constant tearing down of intellectual after intellectual. But the title doesn't give that away, and the book jumps right in the Rousseau and from there to Freud, Marx, Tolstoy and so on, criticizing them all in turn. In all, it was a fun read but one I would not take very seriously.
Profile Image for Kuba Zajicek.
7 reviews6 followers
June 4, 2015
It is a shame that writers do not get a prize for blowing ass, because Paul Johnson would win every time. Using the private life of philosophers like Marx and Sartre as a relevant factor when considering philosophers' intellectual merit is outlandish. His poor content is unfortunately complemented with mundane language that uses excessive detail whilst describing pieces of information irrelevant to the philosophical ideas it should be dissecting (or at least that is what the introduction promises). However, the existance of this book is a good news for all the historians out there who desperately want to write a book and yet do not have a slightest bit of innovative thought on their own; even writers who were tutored by AJP Taylor during their studies at Oxford write shit books, so have at it.
Profile Image for Yomna Saber.
322 reviews98 followers
October 23, 2024
كنت أتمنى ألا أقرأ هذا الكتاب فقد خدعني العنوان وتخيلت أني سأقرأ عن مثقفثين مهمين من زوايا مختلفة لكن الكاتب قد ركز فقط على فضائحهم وشذوذهم وسكرهم وعربدتهم ومواقفهم المشينة والمتخاذلة والجبانة وعلى كذبهم وانتهازيتهم ناهيك عن عقدهم النفسية وتلاعبهم بمن حولهم ... منتهى القسوة واللا أخلاقية ... أعلم تماما بحكم تخصصي في الأدب والنقد أن حياة الكتاب مثلهم مثل غيرهم بها محطات تبعد تماما عن المثالية لكن لم أتصور أبداً أنهم وصلوا لهذا الحضيض ... حطم هذا الكتاب علاقتي بالعديد من الأسماء التي كانت تحتل مكاناً خاصاً عندي مع الأسف
16 reviews23 followers
March 21, 2023
Informative sketches of various leftist intellects. Johnson tries to balance his criticisms; but it’s clear his principal objective is to convince the public not to trust left-wing intellectuals; rather than present a balanced and objective appraisal. Almost all of his subjects have skeletons in their closet; some egregious and others merely disappointing. The one notable exception is Orwell; whom even Johnson couldn’t help but admire. The English writer was one of the few socialist intellectuals to live as he preaches; joining the Spanish civil war and integrating himself with the working class; as opposed to preaching the virtues of equality from his ivory tower.

Chomsky came in for a skewering towards the end. Johnson convincingly showcases Chomsky’s inability to admit that the North Vietnamese may have committed atrocities following American withdrawl; but noticeably Johnson did not comment on Chomsky’s personal life. Pretty much reinforces my view that Chomsky is an intelligent and honorable man whose only fault is to be consumed by ideology.
Profile Image for ˚ ༘♡ ⋆。˚Hatool˚ ༘♡ ⋆。˚ .
393 reviews14 followers
September 13, 2023
* cries dramatically as I fall to the ground and drown in my own tears * FINALLY. I AM DONE WITH THIS BOOK. * screams and dies from lack of oxygen *

This book was... something. Listen, I love gossip about dead smart white guys just as the next girl, but the very clearly conservative lense was... one would call it disappointing.
Also, I did not care for any story after Tolstoy. He was the highlight of this book, but also its downfall as all men (and woman) coming after him were boring and seemed to just walk the same path as the rest.
My favorite like is the one about Tolstoy barging out of his room and yelling that he's emigrating to America. I love Tolstoy. I forgive his blatant anti-semitism because honestly who wasn't an anti-semite at those days? Even semites hated themselves.
Profile Image for Julio Pino.
1,212 reviews103 followers
March 19, 2023
Noam Chomsky commenting on the chapter devoted to him: "You'd have to be clinically insane to write such nonsense". And, who could have guessed that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir slept with some of the same people? Yet, all this time I though intellectuals were above us mere mortals, saints everyone.
Profile Image for Joel.
201 reviews
June 13, 2017
This is a great book. Paul Johnson is one of the best modern historians in terms of writing ability. This book takes a look at Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Sarte, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz and a few other intellectuals. Almost all of them are terrible people behind the scenes. While they exult in telling the world how it should be, their own lives are in ruins and almost all of them treat people as disposable objects.
Rousseau was a "mentally sick man.""Rousseau's reputation during his lifetime, and his influence after his death, raise disturbing questions about human gullibility, and indeed about the human propensity to reject evidence it does not wish to admit."
Johnson summarizes four aspects of Marx's character: "his taste for violence, his appetite for power, his inability to handle money and, above all, his tendency to exploit those around him."
"Marx lived his life in an atmosphere of extreme verbal violence, periodically exploding into violent rows and sometimes physical assault."
Of Henrik Ibsen: "Virtually all of Ibsen's relationships with other writers ended in rows. Even when there was no quarrel, they tended to die of inanition."
Speaking of Tolstoy: "It is a curious delusion of intellectuals, from Rousseau onwards, that they can solve the perennial difficulties of human education at a stroke, by setting up a new system."
"Turgenev had even more reason to be aware of Tolstoy's selfishness and cruelty, having experienced both in good measure. He had been generous and thoughtful in helping the young writer. In return he received coldness, ingratitude and Tolstoy's brutal habit of insulting, often brilliantly, the ideas which he knew his friends cherished."
"...he not only denied the divinity of Jesus Christ but asserted that to call him God or pray to him was 'the greatest blasphemy.'"
Hemingway hated his mother with a passion.
Brecht plagiarized and stole ideas all the time.
"The ability to get the best of both worlds, the world of progressive self-righteousness and the world of privilege, is a theme which runs through the lives of many leading intellectuals, and none more so than Bertrand Russell."
Sarte invented "the verbal technique (culled from German philosophy) of identifying the existing order as 'violent' (e.g. 'institutionalized violence'), thus justifying killing in order to overthrow it."
This only scratches the surface of the stories Johnson relates about divorce, abandonment, cheating, theft, greed, violence and madness. It really makes you not want to take a word that any of these people say seriously, because their lives are so opposite from what they are teaching.
Profile Image for Erik Graff.
5,137 reviews1,373 followers
December 27, 2012
Paul Johnson is a deeply conservative historian who crafts opinionated, but well-written and accessible books. I find much of what he opines, particularly when he approaches the contemporary world, offensive, but that's almost certainly good for me as I'm rather opinionated myself and he often knows more about the particular topic under review than I do. This book tends towards the modern, being a series of ad hominem critiques of intellectuals usually identified as progressive or "Left". The perspective is slanted in that little is said of their peers on the right, but the stories are certainly entertaining even if of questionable relevance to the ideas associated with these individuals.
Profile Image for Skylar Burris.
Author 20 books272 followers
January 4, 2008
In this intriguing volume, Johnson choose ten of history's most prominent intellectuals, including Karl Marx, Doestevsky, and Rousseau. He discusses the lives and theories of these selected individuals, as well as their influence on history, but his work is tied together by an overarching theme. He constantly returns to the terrifying power of ideas and sees in the intellectuals a group of out-of-touch thinkers who love humanity in the abstract but despise or neglect the individual man. Because Paul Johnson is in best form when describing people, Intellectuals may be his greatest work.

Profile Image for Steve Anderson.
4 reviews
August 10, 2013
This book impacted me far more than I thought it would. I began reading it after perusing many varied reviews - most of which were not glowing. Nevertheless, here is my take away: we all make mistakes, some unbelievably wretched. When God is removed from our lives a vacuum remains, and what replaces our moral compass tends to take us places we never intended to be. We all know some who have overcome enormous obstacles and have earned our admiration. Johnson shows me some who others feel merit my praise but who, in fact, never rose above their own malaise.
Profile Image for Logan Grant.
34 reviews1 follower
November 2, 2021
Intellectuals has good concept, is mostly well-executed, and its significant faults don’t ruin all the fun.

Johnson describes the book as “an examination of the moral and judgmental credentials of certain leading intellectuals to give advice to humanity on how to conduct its affairs.” He notes that religious leaders have been subject to this type of examination for centuries but secular intellectuals often escape this same critical evaluation. This book is not an exhaustive survey of all intellectuals (nor does Johnson try to settle on a clear definition of the word) but is rather Johnson’s tour of famous secular thought leaders who were also extraordinary liars, frauds, hypocrites, and assholes. Each chapter save one focus on a single intellectual and begins with an objective enough presentation of their origins and relevance.

At its best, the book exposes lies and hypocrisy with Johnson’s efficient and witty prose. I think that in some cases, he does a great job showing how certain character flaws are actually relevant to the ideas they sponsor. For example, Johnson persuasively links Rousseau’s abandonment of his children to his vision of the state as surrogate parent. In other cases, however, Johnson delves into character flaws that are relatively common among successful men and I don’t think they serve the purpose of the book.

Overall, I found the book illuminating because I have read the work of most of the intellectuals he discusses and I had no knowledge of their personal lives. I didn’t realize that Tolstoy had a legendary messiah complex, Marx had pretentions about being a scientist but much of the evidence he used were outright lies, or that Hemingway was just a massive tool who happened to be a brilliant writer. There were a few flaws that seemed to recur throughout the book and appear to underlie Johnson’s critique of intellectuals as a group. First, they elevate theory above people. This commonly manifests itself in the form of tremendous piety to the abstract well-being of mankind but a lack of interest or effort in treating their fellow man with any compassion or dignity. Intellectuals always imagine themselves as being on the side of the angels, and rarely hesitate to lecture others on morality. This lecturing only applies to others, of course. These intellectuals aren’t bound by the morality they set down for others. Secondly, they elevate theory above truth. Of the intellectuals covered in this book, only Edmund Wilson allowed reality to interfere with his ideas about the world. The rest would simply ignore inconvenient facts and often invent falsehoods to bolster their arguments. Third, they were all talk and no action. Very few lifted a finger to make a difference beyond taking up a quill or pen. Talking and writing were all they were really about. This makes the fourth recurring flaw all the more ironic: the willingness to promote violence to serve their theories. This was not out of character for some intellectuals, like Marx, who were hateful men with despotic tendencies. However, this is even observable in pacifistic thinkers such as Bertrand Russell, and armchair philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre. Johnson argues that violence appeals to so many intellectuals because it “goes hand and hand with the desire for radical, absolutist solutions.” He credits Sartre with inventing “the verbal technique (culled from German philosophy) of identifying the existing order as ‘violent’ (e.g. ‘institutionalized violence’), thus justifying killing to overthrow it. I find it curious that Johnson didn’t include Thomas Paine as one of his intellectuals. I am no expert on the man, but what I know of him would appear to fit the mold, especially where justifying political violence is concerned.

The most glaring problem with the book is Johnson’s fixation on the sexual lives of its subjects. He goes into lurid detail that is far beyond what is necessary to get his point across. He does make an excellent case that some of the most vocal male proponents of feminism have absolutely mortifying behavior toward women. However, as the book goes on the chronicling of infidelities becomes tedious, and dwelling on specific fetishes seem like cheap shots.

Since the thesis of the book is “the private lives and public postures of leading intellectuals cannot be separated: one helps to explain the other. Private vices and weaknesses are almost invariably reflected in conduct on the world stage,” I got a wild hair to read more about Paul Johnson himself and was rewarded with one of the most hilarious ironies I’ve ever witnessed. This book was published in 1988, and features much moralizing about infidelity and even spanking fetishes. At some point the following year, Paul Johnson’s secret mistress came forward and admitted to a long affair with him that included lots of spanking. I consider Christopher Hitchens’ article in Salon “The Rise and Fall of Paul ‘Spanky’ Johnson” as an unofficial final chapter to the book. Hitchens, whose quick and witty prose exceeds even Paul Johnson’s, skewers Johnson’s own hypocrisy and includes some personal anecdotes that make the man seem quite different than what would be inferred from reading Intellectuals.

Ultimately, I agree with Johnson’s position that personal character and behavior should be included in any study of the ideas professed by these intellectuals, even thought that means I cannot take some of his moralizing seriously.
Profile Image for حدائق غاردينيا.
32 reviews7 followers
January 21, 2020
مراجعة كتاب
المثقفون
تأليف بول جونسون
ترجمة طلعت الشايب
إصدار دار رؤية
2018

إذا قُدِّر لكتاب أن يصنُّف "بالخطير" في اختيار الموضوع، وجمع المادة والأدلة، ومناقشة ما في مادته وحولها من قضايا، والتفرّد في المواجهة والحكم المستخلص؛ فسيكون كتاب "المثقفون" من إصدارات دار رؤية، هو الكتاب صاحب النجوم الأعلى في تقييمات الكتب ذات التأثير.
هذا الكتاب أتقن الهدم والبناء، والبحث والتمحيص، والعرض والدقة في المصدرية، وكلها مواصفات للفكر الذي لا تنهزه سوى الحقيقة، وهو ذلك صاحب مبدأ: أن البشر قبل الأفكار! كما أن الكتاب جاء ليعيد لثقتنا الاستواء بأن لا شيء فوق النقد، وأن كل جهد بشري هو عرضة للاختبار؛ في ذاته نفسه لنفسه أولا، ثم أمام التاريخ والبشر ثانيا.
لقد أراد الكتاب أن يضع الذين اصطلحوا على اعتبار أنفسهم "مثقفين علمانيين" على مدى مائتي عام الأخيرة، أن يضعهم في ميزان أفكارهم أنفسهم: هل اختبروا حقا أفكارهم وصدقوا فيها؟ تلك الأفكار التي حوّلت وغيرت مسار حيوات بأكملها – على مستوى الأفراد والأمم- في مجالات السياسة والاقتصاد والاجتماع، وحتى مفهوم الإنسان عن ذاته وموقعه من الكون. لقد أفاض هؤلاء المثقفون فيما نظّروا محميين في رداء "العلمانية" غير السابغ!
تبدأ قصة ظهور المثقف العلماني في العالم، عندما انبثق عصر التنوير من ظل رجال الدين. كانت الشعوب المتحررة من سلطان الكنسية مأخوذة بمخرجات العلوم والاختراعات وسيادة القانون بديلا عن الدين وتفسيراته، وكان من سير الأحوال أن يظهر على التوازي من أصحاب العلوم والقانون- مفكرون مثقفون يجيدون خطاب هذه العقول الجديدة المتعطشة إلى فلسفات ونظريات تضبط حياتها التي تعاد صياغتها بعيدا عن هيمنة الإكليروس القديم.
بنى المثقف العلماني شرطه في الاستغناء عن الدين، ولكن بدلا من أن يقنع برتبته البشرية، صار يرى نفسه "متنبئا" في أفكاره، غير معنيٍ بوضعها على محك التجربة والتقييم، بل وأكثر، أنه رأى نفسه في حلٍّ من الانقياد لها أو التقيد بها في حياته الخاصة!
من هذا التناقض بين الذاتي والموضوعي، ثم من غرور المثقفين الذين علت شموسهم على مدى قرنين، وقد آن لها أن تغرب كي ترى البشرية من يقدّرها لا يقدِّم أفكاره عليها! من كومة متشابكة أتى هذا الكتاب واضحا في مهمته ( إن أحد موضوعات هذا الكتاب هو أن الحياة الخاصة والمواقف العامة لبعض كبار المثقفين لا يمكن الفصل بينها، كما أن الرذائل ونقاط الضعف تنعكس على مسرح الحياة في السلوك).
اجتمع المثقفون على خصائص متقاربة – وتكاد تكون نفسها- فيما يخص الطباع الشخصية، واختيارات الحياة، أو طريقة العيش، وهذا ليس بالأمر الصغير، لأنه يعني إجماعا غير معلن على توجه واحد مما يخلق مناخا عاما يمجِّد المثال الفكري العلماني على ما في من انحرافات أمام أجيال المعاصرين لهم واللاحقين كذلك.
عدد قليل من خصائص المثقفين العلمانيين:

أولا: الاستناد في أطروحاتهم على الاتجاه الراديكالي ( التغيير الجذري) في سياسات حكوماتهم الإصلاحية، دون الاطلاع بالمشاركة المسؤولة فيها. سارتر وَ إدموند ولسون.

ثانيا: يعمدون إلى "ترسيخ الذات" فيما يكتبون عن أنفسهم، لذلك تعتبر السير الذاتية التي كتبها المثقفون عن حياتهم أبعد ما تكون عن النظر إليها مصادر كافية للتعرف عليهم من خلالها. وهذا ما يجعل مذكرات كبار المثقفين لا يمكن الثقة بها، مثل: سارتر وَ دوبوفوار وَ رسل وَ همنجواي وَ جولانسز.

ثالثا: تعمّد الكذب فيما يكتبون عن حياتهم، إن ثمة مستنقع من الأكاذيب ينزاح من تحت سطورهم، مثل: تولستوي، وروسو وليليان هيلمان.

رابعا: الحال المؤسفة التي عاشها المثقفون العلمانيون في حياتهم تكاد تكون متطابقة: الإباحية والتحرر، والانغماس في الشهوات، وعبادة مبدأ اللذة، والإدمان على الكحول والمخدرات والعقاقير المحظورة. ( فقد كانت الممارسات العادية للمثقفين في الستينيات أن يوقعوا البيانات التي تطالب بليبرالية قوانين المخدرات!)

خامسا: الإشادة بالعنف والتصريح بأحقية القتل لأجل الضرورة! وهذا منزلق خطير قد وقع فيه كل المثقفين دون استثناء" التشريع الثقافي للعنف"؛ فالكراهية والدعوة إلى العنف كانا قويين في أفكارهم، انطلاقا من الراديكالية التي كانت التربة التي نمت فيها مذاهبهم الفكرية. فهم قد يستهجنون العنف لأنه مضاد للتناول العقلاني للمشكلات، ولكنهم في الممارسة يجدون أنفسهم من وقت لآخر يكرسونه، وهو ما يطلق عليه "القتل الضروري"، بل ويوافقون لأنصارهم أن يستخدموا العنيف ضد المعارضين لأفكارهم سواء من الحكومات أو المثقفين الآخرين. مثل: جيمس بولدوين، وسارتر الذي أقر أن العنف حق شرعي لأولئك الذين يتعرضون للتمييز الجنسي أن الطبقي.

لكن ما موقف القراء الذين استقبلوا أفكار المثقفين؟ وهل تراهم ساهموا بتعصب وعماية في أن يجعلوا من هؤلاء المثقفين "أنبياء الوقت" لفترة طويلة؟ في الحقيقة فإن الأبطال من المثقفين لا يتم التخلي عنهم بسهولة في عقول النظَارة! إن المأساة هو أن المتأثرين بآرائهم يرفضون -عن سابق إصرار- الاقتناع بأي وجه للنقص يظهر في حياتهم أو سلوكياتهم الشخصية مما يتنافى مع ما يدعون إليه من قيم وأفكار. فرغم كل ما تم كشفه عن حياة "ماركس" مؤسسة الماركسية من زيف وانحراف- حتى في ادعائه نحو المناداة بحقول الطبقة العمالية، في حين أنه لم يعرف في حياته عاملا واحدا، سوى خادمته المنزلية!- إلا أن أنصار الماركسية يستمرون في استحضار أفكاره، حتى لقد طغى اسم ماركس في الثورات العربية المعاصرة.

فما الخلاصة..
انتهى الكتاب إلى تقرير صريح باهتزاز صورة المثقف العلماني أمام الناس، فهم ليسوا أكثر حكمة ولا أكثر قيمة من السحرة أو رجال الدين القدامى، بل إن من العامَة من سيقدمون حلولا أفضل مما قدمه المثقفون، الذين عاشوا للأفكار ولم يعيشوا للناس. ( حذار من المثقفين! لا يكفي أن يظلوا بعيدين عن مجال السلطة، بل يجب أن يكونوا دائما محل شك كلما حاولوا أن يتصدوا للنصح الاجتماعي… وقبل ذلك كله، كان علينا أن نتذكر دائما ما ينساه المثقفون عادة: الناس أهم من الأفكار.. الناس أولا، وأن أسوأ أنواع الاستبداد هو استبداد الأفكار الذي لا يرحم) انتهى الكتاب
47 reviews4 followers
November 30, 2012
Paul Johnson, the British historian, once heard James Baldwin complain about discrimination. His response: "I said, `look here, Baldwin. If, like me, you've been born-left-handed, red-haired and an English Catholic, there's nothing you don't know about prejudice.'"
Johnson wasn't joking. A former editor of the leftish "New Statesman," Johnson turned conservative in the 1970s and served as one of Margaret Thatcher's speechwriters. But unlike the neocons in the U.S., who were angry, humorless and lousy writers, Johnson was often witty and thoughtful and not entirely predictable. And his essays were filled with juicy gossip.
The thesis of this book is that liberal/lefty intellectuals and icons, while professing love for humanity, were often vile people. (Johnson avoids, of course, conservative thinkers who were probably just as vile).
Johnson singles out Rousseau, Karl Marx, Tolstoy and, of all people, Ibsen. All are lying, abusive, cruel to their families and morally bankrupt. There are easy targets like Lillian Hellman. ( Johnson even raises the question that her lover, Dashell Hammett, wrote a lot of her plays). And strange targets like Hemingway, who seemed to have exaggerated some of his heroic exploits and slept with a lot of women. Johnson has a special animus towards Jean-Paul Sartre, who defended Stalin even as the bodies piled up and whose earlier behavior towards the German occupiers of Paris was detestable.
The left despises Johnson. Christopher Hitchens wrote in The Nation, "On every page there is something low, sniggering, mean and eavesdropped fron third hand." Hitchens was exactly the kind of trendy and glib writer that Johnson demolishes.
220 reviews
April 28, 2009
The three stars I gave this book may be misleading. I didn't like the book at all...but I believe it was entirely accurate.

I initially expected this book to discuss the thinking of the intellectuals therein. However, although Johnson wrote a bit about this, the bulk of the book was basically a catalogue of the vices of these influential writers. In fact, it was too much. I quickly tired of reading about the lies and womanizing. It was not edifying, to say the least. I just skimmed quite a bit.

Johnson's basic point is quite correct - there is absolutely no reason in the world to believe these men or their philosophy. And yet it is their philosophy which rules our society. Such is the descent of man when he rejects the one true God.
330 reviews7 followers
June 3, 2020
Fascinating, although harsh review of “intellectuals”, based upon personal papers and accounts, over a 200 year time frame.
The summary statement for their personal behavior vs. espoused philosophy is “do as I say, not as I do”.
Worth the listen/read.
Profile Image for Man Ching.
27 reviews2 followers
January 2, 2010


What a strange book. The whole point of being is to trash intellectuals who think that the pursuit of freedom (either in behavior, in intellectual pursuits, from society.) Paul Johnson admitted that it was unfair to use the private lives of individuals to judge the strength of their thoughts, but nonetheless he spent the entire book documenting the deficiencies of men who talked big and lived meanly. The quality of the men never matched the beauty of their vision, prose, or poetry.

The futility of such an exercise is noted early, in the chapter about Shelley. Johnson admits that this cad was a wastrel who had no compunction about writing mean letters detailing the failures of his parents while concurrently asking for money. Shelley used people, seeing his family as nothing but a source of income and women no more than a means for physical pleasure. Naturally, he thought himself liberal, dispensing with archaic institutions of monogamy. He expected his wife to accept his mistress to share their apartment, but he graciously extended the same privilege to his wife (whom apparently complained about this arrangement.)

Regardless, all this is peripheral: Johnson thinks Shelley wrote beautifully, and his poetry moved Johnson. Johnson writes,

The truth, however, is fundamentally different and to anyone who reveres Shelley as a poet (as I do) it is deeply disturbing. It emerges from a variety of sources, one of the most important of which is Shelley’s own letters.”

Great. But why should the gap between artisanal accomplishments and the empty lives of artists be so surprising, in an age when starlets, athletes, politicians, authors, musicians, and entertainers behave as if they were competing for the favor of the Borgias? Johnson already conceded the point that he can appreciate the artistry, if not the artist.

There was one high point in the book, though. Johnson destroyed Karl Marx on both a personal and professional level. In this instance, it seems that there are elements in Marx’s personality that might have directly resulted in the shoddy intellectual quality of his work. Marx made a better short form than long form writer; the long form exposed Marx’s deficiencies as a researcher and investigator. Das Kapital contained a number of misuse of evidence. Marx did do a spectacular job of digging up dirt on his enemies, though.

In a coda, Johnson links 2oth century atrocities to both secular intellectuals ignoring atrocities committed in their name and to the social milieu they created that promoted nihilism (namely in excesses of Communist regimes.) It seems to me a simpler case that these mass murderers were ambitious, ruthless, and disposed to murder even before they encountered post-modern philosophy. As much as I detest social relativism, post-modernism, and religious dogma, I can’t fault these ideas as causing mass effects. I can, however, fault the men who, upon gaining power to commit atrocities, cloak their acts in the trappings of a recognizable philosophy. To suggest that terrorists or dictators valued life until reading a book seems to be placing the cart before the horse.

In the end, I do agree with Johnson in that it is so disappointing that philosophers rarely reach the ideals they espouse. So what else is new?
Profile Image for Ensiform.
1,499 reviews147 followers
December 14, 2011
The purpose of this book is to question the moral right of intellectuals over the ages to counsel people on how to behave; to this end Johnson examines several so-called “intellectuals” from Rousseau to Normal Mailer: their private lives, their regard for truth, and their skill in public affairs. It is a fascinating and at times irritating book, made all the more amazing by the fact (never mentioned here) that Johnson, although a profoundly conservative thinker, was a socialist for a part of his life. Thus his attacks on intellectuals’ credulity in dealing with the Communist Party is somewhat ironic. Leaving that aside, when he exposes the blatant hypocrisy and even cruelty of some supposed champions of the people and self-proclaimed moral paragons (Marx and Rousseau, especially), he is admirable. It is also perfectly legitimate to expose the lying of a Hemingway or a Lillian Hellman.

But I have several objections to the book as well. First, there is no separate intro or conclusion, no preparatory definition-setting. So what is an intellectual, exactly? It seems to be a thinker who believes that intellect alone can change the world, rather than time-honored traditions. Well, maybe, but then it seems Edmund Wilson is a “man of letters,” then an intellectual, then a man of letters again. An intellectual actually seems to be a bright left-winger. Second, who ever said Hemingway or Shelley or Sartre, for example, were paragons of virtue? They might well be exposed as awful people, but their excoriation does not make as much sense as Marx’s. Johnson seems to simply hate creativity, bitterly resenting the fact that 50,000 mostly young people attended Sartre’s funeral (and dwelling rather unnecessarily on his ugliness). Third, his attacks are inconsistent: he berates most of his victims for their adulterous affairs, but also attacks Ibsen for his platonic relations with girls, accusing him of using people as archetypes rather than individuals. Would he rather Ibsen slept with them? Or he will imply that an intellectual’s change of allegiance is a flaw, but also deplores Brecht for remaining loyal to the CP. In any case, this is obviously an utterly absorbing series of essays, thought-provoking and lucid.
Profile Image for Jacob Aitken.
1,673 reviews399 followers
October 10, 2014
Sure, Johnson has an axe to grind, but facts are facts. His thesis is simple: the aforementioned avant-garde thinkers, so beloved of the Left today, championed the "ideal" of humanity while despising the particular person.

Rousseau: fathered numerous illegitimate children and shipped them off to different orphanages, where Johnson speculates they likely died of neglect. And Rousseau's commitment to the abstract is consistent: if one interprets "the general will" and the "contrat social" in terms of some abstract will, then the result is totalitarianism for someone will have to interpret that will. (If one interprets it by concrete cultural norms, then perhaps it isn't too bad).

Marx: Like Rousseau, he also fathered illegitimate children. Criticisms of Marx's personal life are well known and documented, so we can be brief. He lived off of a capitalist while attacking capitalism. Not much else to say.

Tolstoy: Like the men above, he fathered illegitimate children, debauching many of his maids. But here is where it gets weird. He wrote about it in his journals and encouraged his wife to read them as a holistic exercise. His teachings, while noble, are hypocritical of his lifestyle. He encouraged poverty but never gave up his county. He preached chastity while debauching wenches. I like Tolstoy's novels, though, so I won't say more.

Betrand Russell: Admittedly a genius in mathematics, he was a complete imbecile everywhere else. He debauched many men's wives. He later said he couldn't be anti-American because most of his wives came from America! A pacifist, he advocated nuking the USSR to prevent them from getting nukes.
Profile Image for Milan.
Author 13 books119 followers
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June 13, 2020
Prvi put sam pročitao da Desanka Maksimović nije svetica kada sam, kao klinac, čitao „Tajni život slavnih Srpkinja“ Isidore Bjelice (ko je bez greha, neka prvi baci kamen). Do tada su nas u školi bombardovali beatifikacijom slavne pesnikinje. U suštini bila je to klasična prosvetna indoktrinacija koja se u srpskim školama sprovodi od… pa od prve srpske škole i koja nam je govorila da se Desanka ne dira i da se o njoj ne raspravlja. I onda dođem do knjige u kojoj se neko usudio da Svetu Desanku okleveta, da je prikaže kao nedostojnu osobu blisku svakoj vlasti… Vau! Bilo je to za mene pravo otkrovenje. Neko ZAISTA MOŽE I SME da piše ovako o svetici?

Od tada je proteklo mnogo vode Dunavom i ja sam odavno naučio da apsolutno svaki autoritet valja, ako ne rušiti, onda dovoditi u pitanje…

Na sličnom tragu je i bio i britanski novinar i književnik Pol Džonson u svojoj knjizi „Intelektualci“ u kojoj iznosi prljav veš slavnih intelektualaca i postavlja pitanje da li su oni živeli u skladu sa svojim učenjima i preporukama?

Pa… nisu!

U svakom poglavlju Džonson nam predstavlja po jednog intelektualca, njihovu filozofiju, ali i praksu i način (privatnog) života. Knjiga započinje sa prvim modernim intelektualcem Žan Žakom Rusoom, a zatim slede Persi Šeli, Karl Marks, Henrik Ibzen, Lav Tolstoj, Ernest Hemingvej, Bertold Breht, Bertrand Rasel, Žan-Pol Sartr, da bi u poslednjem poglavlju, koje je tematski posvećeno odnosu intelektualaca prema nasilju, uporedo predstavljeni Džordž Orvel, Ivlin Vo, Siril Konoli, Norman Majer, Kenet Pikok Tajnan, Rajnar Fasbinder, Džejms Boldvin i Noam Čomski.

Neki najmanji zajednički sadržalac svih datih intelektualaca jeste da su bili licemerni, da su proklamovali ideje i načela koji su se pridržavali sve dok njihov lični životni standard i način života nije bio doveden u pitanje, bili su majstori u teorijskoj ljubavi prema celom čovečanstvu, ali su padali na praksi ljubavi prema pojedinačnim članovima tog istog čovečanstva, voleli su novac, nisu voleli da rade… A neki su bili lažovi, kurvari, alkoholičari, kockari, nasilnici… Džonson nam daje galeriju razmaženih, neodgovornih, nepouzdanih sebičnih egoista čije su misli i ideje, poput njihovih života, znale da budu nemarne i nepromišljene. Njihovi najveći propusti su u tome što su više cenili ideje nego ljude, nauku više nego ljudske odnose, sebe, a ne svoje ideje… Čini se da je Niče, kao i uvek, bio u pravu je napisao da je „poslednji hrišćanin je umro na krstu“ jer je Isus žrtvovao svoj život da bi dokazao kako bi trebalo živeti – ne odustajući od svojih ideja po bilo koju cenu. Izgleda da intelektualci nisu spremni za ovu žrtvu. Džonson ih, na koncu, optužuje da su posredno odgovorni za stradanje više miliona nevinih ljudi zbog pogrešno interpretiranih ideja koje su zagovarali.

Više o ovoj knjizi možete pročitati u tekstu na linku ovde: http://www.bookvar.rs/intelektualci-n...
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