Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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148 of 155 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the most profound books of the 20th century!, November 23, 1999
Aron's book deserves recognition as one of the classic works of 20th century intellectual history. Written 40 years ago during the battle of ideas between communism and liberal democracy, "The Opium of the Intellectuals" provided profound insight into the mind of the communist intellectual. Aron, a renowned French historian and philosopher, wrote this devastating critique of French radicals (such as John Paul Sartre) during the height of the Cold War. Unlike Albert Camus in his famous book "The Rebel", Aron fires his guns without mercy and exposes these intellectuals' penchant for irrationalism and extremism. The book's title was derived from Marx's famous quote "Religion is the opium of the people". Marx's belief was that religion diverted people's attention from misery on earth by promising a glorious afterlife. Aron explains communism served this role for radical intellectuals who eloquently rationalized and apologized for communism's barbarism because its promise to deliver utopia on earth. In a nutshell, communism replaced Christianity and other established religions as a new faith, but one grounded in the secular world, not in the heavens. As in all religions, faith is paramount, not reason. Communism's monstrous crimes and wholesale destruction of the individual did not bother these radicals because they believed in the ultimate "means / ends" justification. Since only communism could deliver humanity to the promised-land, it was privileged by its goal, thus any crime could be rationalized as the part of the twisted path to salvation. This masterpiece illustrates the dangers of radical intellectuals who take a wild leap into political fantasy for the sake of an idea. Fredrich Hayek, the famous Austrian economist, summarized it best 50 years ago when he stated "The distance between a single-minded idealist and a fanatic is just one step".
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35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Contunuing relevance of Aron's classic, March 18, 2000
Although Aron's treatise was published many decades ago as a brilliant and unsurpassed analysis of French intellectual culture, it has direct relevance for contemporary fads and foibles of Western cultural and intellectual life. Much of what goes on in the academy today becomes lucid when read within Aron's analytical framework. This book should be read by all who care about the education of their children.
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57 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a book for our time, August 8, 2003
Raymond Aron wrote this brilliant book as a devastating attack on intellectuals who were then much taken with communism, revolution and the proletariat. But it has, as he recognized, obvious relevance to the intellectual climate in the post Cold War world.Consider, for example, this his profound insight that the intellectual "protests against police brutality, the inhuman rhythm of industrial production, the severity of bourgeois courts, the execution of prisoners whose guilt has not been proved beyond doubt.... But as soon as he decides to give his allegiance to a party which is implacably hostile as he is himself to the established order, we find him forgiving.. everything he has hitherto relentlessly denounced. The revolutionary myth bridges the gap between moral intransigence and terrorism." Hence today's intellectuals no longer defend Stalin; they applaud Arafat. They do not question whether Western democratic values are superior to those of the USSR but whether Western values are superior to those of Mid-East and Africa. It is no longer fashionable to question whether the way we see communist countries is culturally apt; instead we question whether how we see terrorists is culturally apt. After all, should we not look for "root causes" of terrorism? That question is still asked. It's just that before 1989 intellectuals asked that question about communist terrorism; today they ask it about Mid-East terrorism. The myth of the revolution has moved to a new continent and intellectuals, the Revolution's devotees, have a new Pope. What a difference a few years make!
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