162
PARTISAN REVIEW
The first thing that strikes us is its curious limitation. Not only
does it
address
itself to none but the intellectuals (which seems reason–
able): it is also quite exclusively
concerned
with them, as though no
other class of our society deserved to be mentioned, much less worried
over. But since this tack may be due to the writer's honesty-a man
speaks most competently about what he knows best- rather than to
invidious motives, I shall grant Mr. Bense his premise and pass on.
The intellectuals, then, have sinned (not in Benda's sense, to be sure)
by relinquishing to brute power their function as planners of the
polity. Or, to make a distinction, they have furnished the blueprints
and left implementation to others, lacking as they did the authority,
moral and otherwise, that comes with organized strength. "For some
time past," Mr. Bense writes, "Europe has existed as a society of in–
tellectuals; a society, however, not yet fully constituted and hence
unable to assume, in the public eye, full responsibility for the world
it
created (viz., the world of technology). Not until that responsi–
bility is taken-not, that is, until intelligence enters politics as a
matter of course and begins to speak, with a voice no one can afford
to ignore, as medical, poetic, technical, literary, scientific intelligence
in our parliaments, councils and governments-can the
dream
of
Europe as a society of nations be realized." By immuring himself in
his specialization, the intellectual has become a factor
not
to be
reckoned with in the civic process, or- since all process is progres–
sive-in the general progress of the race. He has allowed himself to
be outdistanced by the un-intelligent members of our technocracy:
the knowledgeable managerial types, ready with short views, adept
at quick applications- who, nevertheless, have an awareness of what
needs to be done that he lacks. Skilled yet benighted, made sterile by
their own circumscription, they look for guidance- but who is there
to guide them? The professor of social science who never set foot
in a factory? The teacher of art who gasps at the thought of plan–
ning a city? The economist to whom vector analysis is an arcanum?
The mathematician ignorant of the simplest banking operations? The
divorce between scholars and scientists, between artists and scholars,
has become quite appalling, yet hardly more so than the divorce be–
tween scholar and scholar, scientist and scientist; or, certainly, that
between scholars and laymen.
If
our civilization is to continue- as
well it might, once the proper measures are taken-intellectuals must
