Intellectuals

by Paul Johnson

Book Overview

A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world. In an intriguing series of case studies, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sarte, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillan Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tyan, Noam Chomsky, and others are revealed as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory, magnetic and dangerous.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060160500
• ISBN13: 9780060160500
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 385 Pages
• Weight: 1.56 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Intellectuals is a correct, concise and definitive book

I read this book, here in Brazil.This book is correct and definitive.Do you want to see how really was Rousseau, Karl marx,etc.? This book is the best choice to see the reality, about leftists' idols. Karl Marx?One womanizer, lazy, crook, charlatan,etc. man. Rousseau?Another crook.The creator of frauds , such as "the good savage" fraud. All bad ideas of these chalatans:Rousseau, Karl Marx, Lenin,etc. sent to death more than 200,000,000 people since 1917 until our days. Read this book and see the true, about leftists' idols.

Bombastic, but the core message resonates

Unfortunately, this book suffers from the sacred cow syndrome. Johnson discredits so many of the secular world's heroes, that many will not allow his voice to come through the din of their ad hominem accusations. It really is a shame because they cry foul without looking at the big picture. At first glance, this work appears to be using an Ad Hominem attack against mostly secular thinkers. But at its core, it has a much more profound message. These 'attacks' are actually case studies on the validity of the ideas these intellectuals are passing on to our society. His point is this: If these intellectuals' ideas are going to affect the quality of our lives, we must inspect the quality of these intellectuals' lives. This is not ad hominem, it is looking for the proof in the pudding. If the thinkers are putting forth ideas on the mating habits of the Blue Whale, then looking at their personal life is indeed ad hominem. But if our moral framework is being influenced by a great thinker, then it is perfectly acceptable to look at his or her morality. I will say that Johnson is very caustic in his critiques (and hilarious at points), but I believe if you read critiques of non-secular moral advocates who were caught with inconsistencies between their private and public lives, the critiques are at least as biting. Finally, I don't believe most skeptics have read the whole book. The last line of the book is actually where the most clarity is shared. "Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas." In my podcast, Christian With A Brain, this book was a tremendous resource when I discussed the Limits of Logic. When our leaders experiment with the governing of people, when they construct plans for societal design, it would be wise to first place an ear upon the chest of humanity, hear their heartbeat, feel their pain, look into thier eyes, then begin, and end - with them.

No Thinker Should Fail to Read This Book

Paul Johnson's thesis was not, as suggested in the 'Editorial', that all great thinkers have had feet of clay, but that their ideologies do not stand up to the tests of time, common sense and personal practice. As the ideology of Marx claimed more than 22 million lives through the pogroms, gulags and purges of Stalin, how could anyone argue that a close and critical examination of the life of Marx, and its interplay with the communist philosophy he promulgated, is not important? I don't understand also where one reviewer draws the conclusion that Johnson is a 'Christian.' His religion is never mentioned, and is irrelevant in any event, as he uses empirical methods of analysis. The portraits are not only entertaining, THEY'RE A GREAT SHORTCUT TO ACQUIRING A WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF THE CORPUS OF MODERN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY. This is why the book is so great -- I was born too late to be intimately familiar with the works and philosophies of many of these people, yet I don't have time to read the massed collections of their works. From the remove of history, most of what Johnson concludes about them is true, but it is not a facile conclusion. I agree with his thesis that people are ultimately more important than ideas. If one agrees with this, one has to conceed the efficacy of examining the person behind the idea. And these 'intellectuals' are hillarious, pitiful and crazy. A great book for any political bent.