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Harper & Row, N.Y., 1988, 385 pgs., index, end notes
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Most important is his general introduction. "Over the past two
hundred years the influence of intellectuals has grown steadily. Indeed, the
rise of the secular intellectual has been a key factor in shaping the modern
world. Seen against the long perspective of history it is in many ways a new
phenomenon. It is true that in their earlier incarnations as priests scribes
and soothsayers, intellectuals have laid claim to guide society from the very
beginning. But as guardians of hieratic cultures, whether primitive or
sophisticated, their moral and ideological innovations were limited by the
canons of external authority and by the inheritance of tradition. They were
not, and could not be, free spirits, adventurers of the mind. With the decline
of clerical power in the eighteenth century, a new kind of mentor emerged to
fill the vacuum and capture the ear of society. The secular intellectual might
be deist, sceptic or atheist. But he was just as ready as any pontiff or
presbyter to tell mankind how to conduct its affairs." The description is
much longer and very valid.
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The list of 'intellectuals' includes: Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen,
Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Gollancz,
and Lillian Hellman. I do not believe some of these folks were all that
influential, especially compared with many others. But Johnson probably
selected these because comparing their public policy statements and their
private lives reveals their huge hypocrisy. They are all moral monsters.
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