Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals"

Down at my local library I picked up a copy of Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals, which has been a real eye opener (acknowledgements to Michael Cadwallader).

Johnson’s work is a damning study of the lives of a number of leading left-wing intellectuals from the 18th Century philosopher Rousseau through to counter culture radical Lillian Hellman.

Many of these intellectuals experimented with liberal lifestyles long before they became mainstream in the late 20th Century. In almost all cases their experiments failed miserably, with the woman and children in their lives usually coming off the worst.

It is ironic that many of the great leftist intellectuals, like Marx who waxed lyrircal about emanication, were adept at exploiting woman and weren’t too keen on paying taxes or servants wages either.

Perhaps the most shockingly irresponsible intellectual covered in Johnson’s book is Rousseau, history’s first great radical intellectual, who sent four of his children to an overcrowded orphanage, knowing that they were likely to die there.

Given the damning nature of Johnson’s work from a radical liberal perspective, it is surprising that a left wing academic hasn’t tried to produce a counter study, pointing out examples of immoral behaviour by conservative intellectuals like Burke, Strauss and Oakenshott.

The fact that no such work has been forthcoming suggests that these right leaning curmudgeons aren’t necessarily the oppressive bad guys that left-wing academics would have students believe.