Customer Reviews

Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (P.S.)

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This is the kind of book that is either going to inspire or infuriate you, but it should provoke valuable discussion and thought in either case. Johnson's thesis is quite simple: the revolutionary thinkers whose ideas have shaped intellectual history over the past 250 years were, for the most part, lousy human beings. These were not not common or garden variety jerks but personalities whose flaws were so manifest that they must call into question the value of the theories they generated.

This is an interesting proposition. Does it matter that Peter Sellers, the world's greatest comedic actor, was a vile neurotic, that Marilyn Monroe was a goddess on screen but a drug-addled manipulator in everyday life, that Winston Churchill, who saved civilization during World War II, was also an alcoholic egomaniac? Probably not. But Johnson asks a deeper question: if a thinker cannot live out his own principles, can these ideas have any real merit? His book convinces us that there is a real connection between the rancid lives lived by intellectuals and the disasters their ideas produced.

For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is adored by educational theorists and his ideas are entrenched in the curricula of teachers' colleges, despite the fact that he serially abandoned every one of his children. Karl Marx was bourgeois to the core and seems to have exploited the only working-class woman he ever knew: paying her starvation wages, impregnating her and forcing her to abandon their child. Johnson lacerates the behaviour of these prominent figures but more importantly shows how their shabby personal values foreshadow the social harm their works engendered.

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.

Most reviews of this book are positive, but those which are critical have, I believe, missed the point.

It is easy to accuse Dr. Johnson of ad hominem attacks on these leftist icons. However, his main thesis, as pointed out by others, is that in their own lives they manifestly embraced completely different principles. They clearly did not believe the ideas they were advocated to the rest of us. In some cases -- Bertolt Brecht in particular -- it is clear that they simply profited personally from promoting ideas favorable to the state or to other powerful interests. In other cases -- Marx, for example -- we see the resentful expressions of people who had vaulting opinions of themselves and believed the world owed them a lavish living for sharing their genius with us.

The ideas themselves -- communism and socialism -- have, of course, been thoroughly dissected, debunked and disproved in the course of the 20th century. Unfortunately, they have not been entirely discarded; they are still revered by the current crop of intellectual elites.

Incidentally, is is technically correct that there are conservative intellectuals. However, the term, like "progressive", has been largely co-opted by the political Left, so that its basic meaning has been supplanted by an ideological one.

I am not surprised to see that people here violate the basic rules of reviewing a book that I suspect of many tenured academics, namely failure to read a book before judging it and failing to be sure you understand it before you criticize it.

Before we rush to Criticize "Intellectuals" too harshly, we should make sure we read it and understand it and we should not criticize the book that wasn't written. Lets judge "Intellectuals" the book Johnson tells us he wrote in the first sentences of his "Acknowledgements"

"This book is an examination of the moral and judgmental credentials of certain leading intellectuals to give advice to humanity on how to conduct its affairs"

Johnson clearly wrote this book to supply basic character background of certain writers to readers who might adopt how they try to live from one or more of these writers. Clearly, he finds their character hypocritical and sordid enough that he would not think of letting any of them influence how he lives and he thinks readers should reach the same conclusion. If you do not bother to pay attention to the reason and intention Johnson says he wrote what he did, you might mistakenly assume he is saying the writings of these authors are no good because they were persons who were no good. I would also argue that Johnson appears to have written the book for his audience of readers who tend to be conservatives and traditional liberals. Some "reviewers" here erroneously assume Johnson is a Professor. Ironically, under one definition of intellectual, Johnson would qualify as an intellectual himself. He is definitely an independent scholar and professional writer.

Of course, a person could argue that while Johnson claims this book is not just highly biased personal attacks meant to discredit certain ideas that doesn't mean Johnson isn't doing just that, trying to discredit ideas he doesn't like by questioning the character of the authors or chief proponents of those ideas. Equally true is the argument that if we take that stance, we have to do more than just hurl labels at Johnson and his book. We must assemble a rational argument that he is in fact discrediting ideas by discrediting their promoters. What we think an author seems to be doing isn't enough to cricise his work.
Using "seems to be" logic against an author is no different than jailing people because they seem criminal.

If we take Johnson at his word and if we rationally use what we get from his book, we are enlightened by what he writes about Rousseau, Marx, and Sarte. I oppose what most of these writers espouse as much as Johnson does, but I must say there is nothing in "Intellectuals" that constitutes real disputation of any of the writings of any of the writers.

"Intellectuals" purports to present the poor character of the chief supporters of certain ideas, not the ideas themselves. I find some of it is more gossip or impressionistic than factually supported but overall I find the book enlightening.

I thought that Intellectuals by Paul Johnson was a fascinating look at how people with high IQs feel that they can tell the rest of the world how they should live their lives when they themselves can't live out their own theories--they are hypocrites! The repulsiveness of these so called intellectuals lives should also make you not want to hold them in high esteem, like most elite social groups do.

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.

Rousseau wrote about truth and virtue but had neither himself. Karl Marx "...was not interested in finding the truth but proclaiming it" but sadly appealed to "unrigorous minds". Hemingway was a big liar, progressive alcoholic and a supporter of Communism. Berthold Brecht was a Communist who stole others' work and refurbished it. Bertrand Russel was an intellectual aristocrat like Lenin who despised and sometime pitied people. Jean-Paul Sartre had a philosophy of action but in reality he was an: "Odd philosophy teacher who...has specialized in the study of his students underwear." And in 1952 he decided to back the Communist Party. Noam Chomsky does not get pulled down by the author for alcoholism, womanizing etc., but for falling into the "Necessary Murder Syndrome", the antithesis of his pacifism. He approved of the horrific massacre of millions in Cambodia that were carried out by Communists trained in Paris. According to Paul Johnson what all these intellectuals have in common is that they: "...habitually forget that people matter more than concepts and must come first."

I enjoy Paul Johnson's writing very much . The book seemed very slanted towards my own bias . Though strong bias is not so enlightening in history books . I already saw the darkening of the intellect post "enlightenment", before reading his tales . It would have been better to have see some bright spots within the book . Even darkness possesses some light .

This is an excellent look at many of the so-called great thinkers and philosophers that have been so revered by the academics in our schools and colleges. Their clay feet are fully exposed by author Paul Johnson. Thomas Sowell has also written on "Intellectuals" and has drawn the same negative conclusions about their role in history. And, Norman Podhoretz' "Ex-Friends" also details the corrupt and gross lifestyle of many modern beatniks who he abandoned after he switched from being a liberal to a neo-conservative.

Johnson's book serves as a useful antidote for those people who for some reason admire "intellectuals." Such admiration stems from the the mistaken belief that intellectuals are the smart capable people who have elevated civilization and created the progress that has seen mankind advance over the centuries to a life of comfort and affluence. But, that belief is wrong! It all depends on what you mean by "intellectuals." Sowell makes the distinction that "soft-science" intellectuals, who love abstract concepts and ideologies, are merely "dealers in second-hand ideas" who fail to connect to reality and seek to rule the common people from on top--always with terrible consequences. Johnson's book details this same recurring flaw in soft philosophical thinking.

On the other hand, "hard-science" intellectuals, such as engineers, lawyers, businessmen, physical scientists, etc., have helped by following a rational and pragmatic approach. They are the ones that designed the government machinery as well as the industrial machinery that allowed the growth of both representative government and the equipment that powered the Indutrial Revolution. I believe there is a different mind-set involved: The highest IQ types think abstractly and so are drawn to ideologies and utopian concepts. The more practical minded folks are machinists at heart and make things that actually work. The characters in Johnson's book demonstrate the inability of "deep thinkers" to make anything work--even their own lives.

The almost universal love affair with conceptual fancies that so bewitches intellectuals was cleverly explained by one of their most brilliant writers: About 10 years ago Norman Podhoretz was asked on C-SPAN why he had advocated the Far Left causes for over 30 years before converting to a Reagan conservative. He replied that, being an intellectual, it took him 30 years to recognize what a common man would see immediately! (Of course, being an intellectual, he has since proceeded to favor the most conservative goals with a passion equal to that formerly given to radical causes.)

While it is interesting to see that many of the famed soft-science intellectuals could not even manage to live decent constructive lives, that fact is not needed to minimize their importance. More importantly, their theories and ideologies have failed to produce favorable results. Their persistence in advancing their pet favored theories also indicates that they ignore the scientific method and are more concerned with the beauty of their ideas than the results gained. Johnson's book makes it clear that this is an approach common to most of our intelligentsias.

Of course there have been some decent soft-science philosophers who have communicated good ideas and promoted positive institutions. John Locke and Adam Smith are two that even political conservatives favor because they summarized useful principles dealing with representative government and free open economies. However, my own study of such "helpful intellectuals" indicates that they were merely summarizing what ordinary people had already proven. Representative assemblies and free marketplaces had demonstrated their empowering effect since they were employed to build the ancient Greek and Phoenician civilizations. Thus, even the best of the philosophers who described such helpful institutions were about 2,000 years late.

An added plus for Johnson's book is that it is emminently readable, humorous, and full of great goosip about some of the biggest names in history. This is an updated edition very similar to the original 1988 paperback which I have also enjoyed greatly.

A very unique and thorough collection of biographical sketches of famous figures in history with "big ideas". I enjoyed not so much finding that these people have faults, as human beings, but the origins of their ideas are revealed in some cases to be truly disturbed and unhealthy perspectives. Also, their egos and lack of regard for simple honesty in many cases are truly astounding.