WOLF LEPENIES
119
carved from crooked wood.
Criticism of the Enlightenment, which is now back in fashion, most
often emerges without knowledge of the texts. Diderot read everything,
but no one reads Diderot. His programmatic essay on the "philosophe"
points to the risks that await the intellectual through the overestimation of
reason. But Diderot also shows, like Kant and other Enlightenment
thinkers whose work should again become compulsory reading, how this
danger can be countered: through decency and commitment, and the at–
tempt to make bourgeois society livable and attractive for everyone.
This
is a rather boring task, just as democracy is the most boring way
to organize political life. Against popularist politicians and intellectuals
drifting towards the right, it is important to support the tedium of the
Enlightenment and democracy. And little harm would be done if, instead
of publicly grumbling, more intellectuals stayed in their own comers and
followed Andre Gide's example: "I've had enough now with the ex–
change of ideas, I want to keep a few of them to myself."
Translated from the Gennan
by
Ann T. Gardiner
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