Johnson's Intellectuals example essay topic

Paul Johnson, Intellectuals, Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. First Perennial Library edition published 1990,385 pp. In terms of quality of writing itself, Johnson's Intellectuals makes for entertaining historical dream. The British author's intent is to put to test several of the 'intellectuals' who exerted cultural and social influence during the Enlightenment period forward to our own time.

Johnson writes", One of the most marked characteristics of the new secular intellectuals was the relish with which they subjected religion and its protagonists to critical scrutiny. How far had they benefited or harmed humanity, these great systems of faith? To what extent had these popes and pastors lived up to their precepts, of purity and truthfulness, of charity and benevolence? The verdicts on both churches and clergy were harsh. Now, after two centuries during which the influence of religion has continued to decline, and secular intellectuals have played an ever-growing role in shaping our attitudes and institutions, it is time to examine their record, both public and personal. In particular, I want to focus on the moral and judgmental credentials of intellectuals to tell mankind how to conduct itself".

In this attempt to put the critics of religious morals to the acid test, Johnson begins with Rousseau, highlighting his self-centered ness, sexual perversity ("liked to be spanked" and was a public exhibitionist of his "bottom"), his ironic abandonment of his own children at birth, and his naive political status. Moving onward, I found a moral failure in the life of the poet Shelly, who emphasized imagination for the transformation of society, but did not possess the imagination to put him in the place of another on a personal level, and hence was a great debtor and thief, adulterer, and truly without compassion. Marx, I discover, was purely philosophical and academic, disliking the working proletariat, and an exploiter of others. Johnson fills us in on Tolstoy and Hemingway's sexual infidelities and emotional abuses of their respective spouses, the shaky foundations of Bertrand Russell, and Sartre's life of sexual and wasteful excess. In short, much like the Protestant Reformers who preceded and indirectly encouraged the devaluation of all external sources of authority that came later, Johnson engages in a swift, persuasive and admittedly unfair ad hatefully attack on the newly crowned 'popes' and 'priests' of the Enlightenment. The idea is that if moral and cultural existence can be rooted within the span of the faculties of the human spirit, rejecting for the most part the claims of revelatory guides, how has this panned out practically in the lives of those who lead the charge?

What has humanism, based principally on the self-governing use of reason, to say for itself rationally? Has it worked? Johnson's point is a good one, though I think his tactics is flawed. Reading Intellectuals is a bit like listening to gossip, which is both unnecessary and necessary. To put the Enlightenment emphasis on the intellect to the test through challenging the moral lives of those thinkers who have had an historical influence is valid; however, Johnson risks a understated misleading notion of concluding that one's immorality stems directly from the area of ideas (an 'Enlightened' notion itself). He therefore stumbles in the same way he would criticize his intellectuals for stumbling.

The attack upon intellectuals no more disproves their ideas than their attacks can effectively disprove the claims of the Christian Church in the West. Yet, the gossip also serves a necessary function if one remains to the concept, that the separation between one's ideas and one's life is an unfortunate gap, and that the best moral teachers have brought the two into dynamic union. From that basis, which is more of an Eastern view of moral authority, Johnson's well-paced attack serves a useful purpose. Johnson's choice of intellects is also seemingly random, but perhaps are also reflections of Johnson's unfairness, which twists the thesis of the book in his favor. Why Rousseau and not Voltaire or Turgot?

Why Shelly but not Byron or Keats? Why Tolstoy but not Dickens or Turgenev or Dostoevsky? Lastly, given Johnson's method, it's interesting that Johnson's own life has come under inspection in the paparazzi press and popular yellow journals, allegations of "immorality" not unlike Rousseau's which can be found easily. No clear lines of distinction between ideas and moral life have been made.

Couldn't it be than even the greatest of intellects might also be found, at one time or another, as a moral failure? Are not most people, at their worst, puzzled with both bad ideas as well as moments of double standards? Here I think lies Johnson's most fatal flaw, his own seeming lack of compassion for those under the lens of his moralistic statements. On a more superficial level, Intellectuals is a pleasure to read, filled with interesting details from the lives not only of Rousseau, Shelly, Marx, Hemingway, Russell, Sartre and Tolstoy, but there are also chapters dedicated to Ibsen, Brecht, Wilson, Gollancz and Helm an. The last summary chapter touches on twentieth century madness, and includes brief discussions of several various contemporary intellects. In the final analysis Intellectuals is an engaging, thought-provoking and intriguing read, and that's why, despite it's apparent flaws, I would recommend it highly.