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PARTISAN REVIEW
have suffered penalities. It is on a much smaller scale. All the same, it is an
orthodoxy, a set of ideas that inhibit free inquiry. And I think we should
look to the experience of our friends in Eastern and Central Europe. I
have yet to see, let me say by way of conclusion, an intellectual who,
having paid the price of setting himself against Marxist orthodoxy,
doubts
that there is truth or
doubts
that there is objective reality, or who has the
slightest
doubt that pursuing the truth ought to be the end and aim of
education. I asked Radim Palous what the role of the university should
be in a democracy, and he said, to educate, to draw students from the
dark into the light, to move them to an understanding of the truth. I
replied, well, you know, on American campuses now, the whole notion
of truth is very much under question. There are many who argue it
doesn't exist, that only perspectives do, and that our job is to explore
perspectives. He would have none of that. He said, to be educated, we
must understand the truth, and that means literally to stand under it.
It
is
above us, not we above it. All of us have much to learn from one an–
other, and I'm very pleased that the NEH could help make this confer–
ence possible.
Edith Kurzweil: Thank you.
THE
RESPONSIBILITY
OF INTELLECTUALS
Selected Essays on Marxist Traditions
in Cultural Commitment
ALANM. WALD
Revolutionary Studies Series
$25.00
Special Price to Readers of Partisan Review
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Phone 908-872-1441
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