WOLF LEPENIES
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tionalism, shaped by poets and thinkers, that first erupted in Germany
during the war ofliberation led finally to betrayal by intellectuals; in other
words, to their engagement in politics.
In the nineteenth century, intellectuals either withdrew or they re–
belled. Karl Marx was a rebel intellectual whose influential work turned
the Enlightenment's pipe dreams into political reality.
It
was during the
great October Revolution, so it would seem, that the program laid down
by the "philosophes" finally came into being. The year 1917 completed
1789: the intellectuals had at last changed the world too. Their fascination
with this event is inconceivable from today's point of view. It left its
marks on both the left and the right alike. The murderous ideologies of
the twentieth century - here lies an affinity between fascism and com–
munism - seduced the intellectuals to fit reality to utopia. For the
intellectual is a handicapped man of action.
In this light, it is significant that right-wing intellectuals in France are
now forming a group called "Action Fran.yaise," while in Germany they
go by the name of "Tat-Kreis" (Circle of Action). Both fascism and
communism promise to fulfill long- repressed dreams: in the thrill of ac–
tion, ideas finally become reality. This explains why communism was so
long attractive after the fall of fascism. Only one ideology of action re–
mained, and it was towards this ideology that the handicapped man of ac–
tion, the intellectual, directed himself, whether he agreed with it or not.
Rare were those who saw an intellectual challenge in the liberal ways of
the industrialized West. In France, Raymond Aron found himself oppo–
site Jean-Paul Sartre. In Germany, it was the liberal political scientist
Theodor Eschenburg against Ernst Bloch.
The student uprisings in the sixties were an attempt to escape from
the boredom of liberal bourgeois society, which intellectuals did not want
to see as the fulfillment of history. With John F. Kennedy murdered,
there went the last Western politician whom one could trust to mobilize
intellectual political energies. The failure of the sixties rebellion and long
period of detente left Western intellectuals feeling cynical. With political
options seemingly played out and the threat of a reality check indefinitely
postponed, one could intellectually believe in anything and everything.
Deconstruction turned into credo, values disappeared, and the canon was
rejected. Communism deradicalized itself and became uninteresting from
an intellectual point of view. At the same time, state socialism liberalized
itself enough to salve the West's conscience and justify its own benevolent
noninterference.
The unexpected fall of the communist regimes has been fatal, not
only for Western governments but for Western intellectuals as well. Now
the "anything goes" philosophy is really in - but the challenge to think
boldly must be met in reality. The responsibility of both politicians and
