INTELLECTUALS AND WR.ITER.5
SINCE THE THIRTIES
539
state of elevated consciousness. That is to say, everybody has to consider
questions, everybody has to think. The mind is suddenly invaded by these
new necessities to analyze and to decide. Everybody therefore is involved
in some kind of intellectual project. The trouble is that we seem to be
incapable of coping with these challenges. The masses of mankind new
to consciousness and new to thought are simply incapable of handling
the volume and diversity of problems that confront us.
To go back to my first point, it is important to distinguish here be–
tween those intellectuals who had a formative influence upon politics
and society over the last two or three centuries and those who, like the
writers, simply tried to follow subjectively, in the realm of feeling, who
tried to ascertain what our states of being were. I've even thought
sometimes that any great intellectual benefactor about to release his sys–
tem upon us should consider what things would look like if his ideas
were corrupted, because they always are corrupted. So that if a Rousseau,
for instance, had understood how his theories of love, marriage, and the
family were going to affect civilization for the next two centuries, what
fatal effects they would have, he might have hesitated a little bit before
launching these tremendous projects and reforms.
Question:
Since we have such a distinguished panel, I would like to ask
them something that has always remained unanswered for me.
It
seems to
me that intellectuals were not only carriers of social change but that
historically they have also been props of existing society. There was al–
ways this
DiciIfllllg IIl1d Warheif,
truth and poetry: on the one hand they
saw the grand, noble vistas. On the other hand they were capable of
justifying or living with something that did not conform to their reality.
It
was mentioned here, of course, that the United States was one of the
widest examples where this ideal of Locke, that all men were created
equal, was incorporated into ollr legal system, yet at the same time we
had a system where a man could claim another as his property. And I
have also seen this happening even at American universities, where people
knew about the Soviet tyranny and persecution, yet at the time when I
came to this country, to this university, it was not the thing to say.
It
was not the thing to say at any university, as a matter of fact.
The question is, does the intellectual - and of course in the Soviet
Union, we don't even talk about this - in examining society project his
own image as he would wish the society to change or be? Is he willing
to overlook the reality for the sake of an ideal he hopes will come
about?
