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The intellectuals' ambivalence expresses a disdain for the concrete.
Disguised as empiricism, an absolutized dogma allows them to act out
their inner compulsions, an acting-out which is nowhere more evident,
Lasch argues, than in the case of those self-designated pragmatists whose
"critical acceptance" of America he thinks indistinguishable from total
endorsement.
Lasch's diagnosis of a collective intellectual unconscious has a thera–
peutic purpose. He'd prefer intellectuals to adopt a mode of thought
which is detached from immediate political considerations, critical and
true to the pursuit of culture. Unfortunately, Mr. Lasch's prescription
is exceedingly vague.
It
is appreciably easier to see what he dislikes than
to imagine what he favors.
The radicals' efforts to liberate man from old forms of cultural
tyranny, Lasch claims, often ended in endorsements of subtler and more
pervasive forms of repression, because, he suggests, of the intellectuals'
inability to stay for very long on the margins of society; no conviction
was as strong as their revulsion for isolation. The initial skepticism and
reserve they opposed to America's participation in World War I gave
way, quickly enough, to an affirmation they were only too happy to be
allowed to make. Lasch's brilliant sketch of Colonel House and his
associates illustrates their fantasies of omnipotence and destructiveness,
which are none the less startling because they were unconscious. The
new radicals welcomed cataclysms which promised both universal de–
struction and universal reconstruction.
Lasch attributes the intellectuals' malaise to a specific historical
development, the emergence of a mass society in which they as a group
were only one of many fragments.
In
contrast to his descriptions of par–
ticular persons and events, his larger historical analysis of the source
of the intellectuals' discontents is quite unconvincing. He is uncertain
whether capitalism, industrialism or mass society is responsible for the
intellectuals' plight, and these highly schematic terms are not used any–
where critically.
There are, however, many good things in this book: remarks on the
intellectuals and the cult of publicity; reflections on youth, age and
wisdom; thoughts on sexuality and personal relationships generally. (A
sketch of the intellectuals' attachment to the Kennedy administration is
very amusing and highly instructive.) There are also some very striking
failures to seize some obvious opportunities for enlarging our self-knowl–
edge as intellectuals.
Lasch seems confident that religion in America is relatively un-
