Intellectuals

Author: (British) Johnson / Yang Zhengrun et al
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-02
Features: In Paul Johnson's The Intellectuals, the author thoroughly presents and critiques the unknown private lives of over a dozen humanist intellectuals—such as Rousseau, Shelley, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Russell, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, and Lillian Hellman—whose darker aspects are often excluded or obscured from their glorified public personas. These modern, contemporary, and secularized intellectuals inevitably possess human weaknesses, which are not only acceptable but even serve as evidence of their rich humanity, reinforcing their mythical aura. However, the significance of the flaws Johnson exposes lies in how they render the thoughts of these intellectuals self-deceptive lies, making their lives exaggerated, pretentious, and unrealistic, and turning their ideas into delusional, detached from life, and ahistorical, ahistorical, and ahistorical fallacies. Reading the entire book is highly satisfying, leaving one feeling invigorated and exhilarated.
However, the identity of humanist intellectuals is not solely determined by their private lives. While exposing the darker side, one can equally find facts proving the genuine light in many of them. Moreover, over a dozen intellectuals do not sufficiently substantiate the plausibility of Johnson's arguments. The thoughts of humanist intellectuals are generally developed on a purely spiritual level, often without reliance on modern social sciences, so their ideals frequently far exceed their sense of reality. Coupled with their obstinate "universalism," one-sided "absolutism," and varying degrees of psychological distortion, their discourse is often a lie—a sophisticated, easily deceptive, and even self-deceptive one. Yet, people sometimes cannot help but fall in love with such lies, using them as substitutes for an unsatisfactory reality. In the pursuit of transcending reality and the self, people often become entangled in them, even living within them.
With the profound changes in society, the nature and function of humanist intellectuals should and are undergoing significant transformations. The traditional monism and absolutism, with their legislative and savior-like connotations, are being replaced by pluralism and relativism, with a democratic spirit and an emphasis on dialogue and exchange. So, what should be the role of humanist intellectuals? Intellectuals come in many forms—humanist, social science, natural science, and hybrid. As humanist intellectuals, they remain critics rather than blind followers of existing systems or creators of ideology. However, their critique does not impose universal or inevitable models and moral commandments upon society and humanity. Instead, they preserve the space for originality in human thought through their ideas, establish a foundation for genuine interpersonal communication, and uphold the pluralism and coexistence of diverse ideas and cultures. They are the "ignorant" Socrates rather than the "all-knowing" Plato. Here, they represent the conscience of society and humanity, enabling their survival at the public level. But as intellectuals, they must also be creators, discoverers, and interpreters in a specific humanist or even social science field, representing the rationality of society and humanity in certain aspects and allowing their survival within the knowledge system. Otherwise, their social conscience and critical spirit would lose their foundation. For humanist intellectuals, both aspects are indispensable.
However, all of this unfolds within a particular knowledge community, and their voices are merely one among many in the intellectual collective, or even the humanist intellectual collective, no longer constituting universal discourse or interpretation. This is the predicament of contemporary humanist intellectuals.