318
ever did . Well, obviously. Sontag
would surely say that this only
proves her point: Stalin's variant
worked; Hitler' s did not (although,
had the odd battle gone a bit better
for the Germans, the numbers game
might have a slightly different look
to it).
Wieseltier has many opinions
as to the proper role of intellectuals.
Far from championing the intellec–
tual life or taking up the tasks of
critical thinking to which intellectu–
als should
be
pledged, Wieseltier is
proposing a role for intellectuals for
which they are neither particularly
well suited nor needed . Again and
again, he speaks of the need to
embrace the intellectually unattrac–
tive, the philosophically odious, and
to live in the unpretty world of poli–
tics.
If
this is indeed the task of
intellectuals then , in my view, they
should all go to medical school or
learn some useful trade. What on
earth does Wieseltier imagine the
intellectual life to be, if the weight of
his argument is that intellectuals
should ignore precisely those quali–
ties in themselves that make them
intellectuals? For one doesn ' t need
to be an intellectua-l , surely, to
embrace the intellectually unattrac–
tive and the philosophically odious.
That comes naturally to human
beings and in no way constitutes the
fulfillment ofWieseltier's injunction
(the closing line of his essay) that the
"challenge to the intellectuals is to
be serious, period. "
What troubles Wieseltier, I sus–
pect, is that somewhere he knows
that to
be
an intellectual is in the
end to be at odds with power. Yet he
wants to shape public policy. This
lies behind his injunction to Ameri–
can intellectuals that they make
their peace with the Weinbergers of
this world. The glory of Western
intellectuals is that they are not civil
servants but critics of society–
people who question, who remain
PARTISAN REVIEW
aloof, who take posltIons that
are
sometimes impractical and that
offend the powerful. The dislike of
the intellectual is a common thread
in Hitler' s Germany and Stalin's
Russ.ia, Pol Pot's Cambodia and
Pinochet's Chile. Intellectuals who
are doing their job should be mock–
ing power, sympathizing with those
who have lost and those who suffer.
It is the intellectual's duty to be
seditious, to be unpopular with the
authorities-in short, to doubt.
Sontag' s speech at Town Hall
was brave , not only because it
expressed unpopular views , or
because it entailed the renunciation
of a lingering hope for a better
future. What was especially moving
was Sontag' s acceptance of the need
to call everything into question and
to risk the lonely uncertainty that
such a rupture inevitably brings
with it. Her scruples do her honor
since, unlike Wieseltier or the rest of
her critics, she is aware that in
renouncing communism, in insist–
ing, as Simone Weil put it , on
refraining from again "letting
empty hopes set us afire," she is
declaring that the sacrifices of gen–
eration after generation of noble
souls were utterly in vain, and that
their hopes were nothing but illu–
sion. This is a terrible, sobering
thing to know, and the knowledge of
it cannot and should not be arrived
at lightly. But then Wieseltier knew
it all already, didn't he?
David Rieff
New York, New York
Leon Wieseltier replies:
Of course I knew it already. So
did Rieff. We were born late, which
was good luck; we can study the his–
tory of the illusion , and not suffer it.
Rieff rejects this advantage , and
prefers to suffer. He writes affect-
