Book Review: Intellectuals

You may want to love this book. You may want to hate it. You may just find it the most boring thing in the world. What author Paul Johnson has done is given us a tour of 14 or 15 famous intellectuals throughout the last couple of centuries while thoroughly trashing them for the rascals they were.

It would be tempting to say this book is anti-intellectual. It is not. My first impression, after hearing the first few mini-biographies was this: really, really broken people can come up with world-changing ideas. We must separate the person from the things they brought us. Otherwise we're doomed.

In an age of Cancel Culture, it's a great message, and it's a message from over 40 years ago. There's nothing here pandering to any current political movement. Instead, for the reader there should be some thoughtful introspection about what, exactly we expect from intellectuals and why.

As the book progressed, a second thesis came into focus for me: there's a difference between being a hard-working smart person who advances a particular field and a person who presents themself as an all-round intellectual capable of commenting on society at large. The second one is much more difficult to do, and it's not impossible. The problem is that many times a hard-working smart and capable person suddenly realizes they have the capability to step out onto the world stage in a large way, making comments and judging everything they run across. This is heady territory, and it's far, far too easy to start looking around at the current youth, your peers, the press, your admirers, and others for validation instead of honestly evaluating whether or not you're helping mankind or hurting.

It feeds on itself. A recent television celebrity was asked why public TV talking heads tended to be so odd. They replied something along the lines of "You're sitting there in a studio, surrounded by people who depend on your success, and you're talking to a camera. At night you go home and worry about whether you're driving up the audience the way you should. That'll drive anybody crazy"

Indeed it will. This is a great book for folks who love history and thinking about how we allow smart people to impact the rest of our society.