Intellectuals - Paul Johnson

This is an insidious book and there's nothing in the book cover to suggest a message that's fairly radical. Contrary to the expectation of a series of hagiographies that typically populate encyclopedic entries, this book picks on a seemingly random series of intellectuals (some of whom have had profound impact on history and the so called progress of civilization). Towards the end the choice seems to be suspiciously selective and deliberate, leading to a conclusion of the need for a freedom from the tyranny of ideas.

The book starts with Rousseau and his influence on 18th century France. Four pages into the book and the facade of a revolutionary intellectual lifts and we can visualise a petty, selfish, ungrateful monster. There are disagreements with Voltaire , a betrayal of Diderot who was one of his earliest supporters and while the ideas shine through, the lighthouse seems to be lowered in stature. There is Shelley next , again brilliant but brash - sexually exploitative , stubborn and proud , turning on his parents and largely sponging off friends and relatives. Karl Marx is revealed to be a bookish grafter of ideas with no realistic idea of the working class which he is historically credited with championing , in fact even Engels fed him with fairly inaccurate portrayals of the working class which further fuelled a rather dodgy basis for communism. Ibsen has your sympathy and admiration for about halfway through his biography before he is dragged down into the pits of humanity with his heartlessness writ all over his miserable existence. Tolstoy could be forgiven his megalomania given his aristocratic upbringing in an extremely unequal society like pre-communist Russia. But the frank diaries and the breaking away from society seems of have its influence on Gandhi. Hemingway follows and while there is no denying a remarkable writing style that he left behind, its a wrecked lifestyle that rushed headlong towards his doom. There is Bertolt Brecht, Bertrand Russell whom we cant help but detest for their slimy manipulations. The leftists viz. Sartre, Victor Gollanz, Lillian Hellman(open of the few ladies to grace or rather disgrace this collection) are relegated to the garbage bins of historical repute.

Therein lies the beauty of the book, towards the end there seems to be a logical strain that ties all of these intellectuals together. And while Karl Marx and Cyrill Connolly may be as distant as you can possibly imagine in their intellectual positions, they had similar distorted personalities that are hidden behind the overarching power of their ideas. While the power of the idea in hindsight seems awesome, it has to be balanced with the impact on society (some have led to massive social engineering which called for the lives of millions). As the author points out, some of Hitler's handpicked mass murderers were intellectuals, so beware of the cruelty of ideas that seeks to bend humanity around it. To the naive non-intellectuals, the character assassinations itself provide for great entertainment