Intellectuals, Democracy and Good Will

By Pedro Blas Gonzalez.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) is a caricature of a stereotypical Marxist intellectual. He went to Cuba in 1960 to witness firsthand the communist state that Castro’s revolution installed in that island nation. At that time Sartre was a communist, this, of his own admission. However, he was instructed by Castro, not to mention socialism or communism in Cuba, once he returned to France. Sartre called Ernesto “Che” Guevara “not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age.” He also referred to Guevara as “the era’s most perfect man.” Today we can easily recognize and even chuckle at Sartre’s self-imposed ignorance. Unfortunately, the crimes against humanity that such intellectual dishonesty foster is hardly a laughing matter. It is also fascinating to witness how submissive radical ideologues are to those totalitarian power brokers who rule over them. Mind you, these are Marxist intellectuals who are very concerned with “false consciousness” and the degradation of “Master/Slave” relationship.

Interestingly, Sartre brutally attacked Albert Camus when the author of The Rebel – a first-rate and devastating dismantling of the dialectical mechanism of Marxism – refuted his celebration of the “necessary” peril of Soviet Stalinism. Sartre went to Cuba in the same vein that a gullible child goes to the circus – to be entertained by a fantasy world that we only hope would come true. To his naïve chagrin, in 1971, Sartre discovered that Castro held Heberto Padilla, a leading Cuban poet, as a political prisoner. The charge was: “subversive writing.” Padilla had been a Castro supporter. In 1968 Padilla published a book entitled, Fuera del Juego (Out of the Game) where he vented his dissatisfaction with communism. Sartre, rightly so, took issue with this injustice. What Sartre failed to understand, as he failed to understand so many other things about the human condition, was not that there was one poet in prison, but that there were thousands of men and women in Cuban prisons – where many new ones remain to this day – but rather that the system, which he so hailed as the model of radical freedom was indeed a prison of the human spirit.

In “Conversation with Jean Paul-Sartre,” a chapter from Simone De Beauvoir’s book, Adieux: A Farewll to Sartre, the existentialist philosopher does not apologize for his decisions. He tells the reader that he looks back on his past with a “benevolent eye.” Instead, he recognizes that he made mistakes but that these were “not mistakes of principle” but rather “mistaken methods, mistakes in the opinions expressed about some given fact.”

Of course, the arrogance of not recognizing that his support for failed, inhumane, and evil principles is precisely what disqualifies smug intellectuals like Sartre and his anointed brethren from having anything of merit to contribute to the human condition. This is still very much the case today. 

When dealing with intellectuals, it is important not to confuse intelligence with the virtues of a self- reflective intellect. Intelligence, as a raw tool of human beings that helps us to get on in the world, is important for survival. Yet the cultivation of intelligence alone can often turn sinister. History is riddled with an abundance of such malefic craftiness. On the other hand, the capacity and desire for self-knowledge is the vital form of intelligence that can deliver us to wisdom. Wisdom, for the ancient Greeks comes about as the culmination of self-knowledge. The latter requires sacrifice and sincerity.

This propensity toward contemplation can be seen in thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, and in the thought of the stoics. In these ancient Greek thinkers and schools of thought we clearly witness speculative and practical reason being guided by a unifying process, which always culminates in self-reflection. After Socrates was put to death by envious political rivals, his pupil, Plato, became disaffected by the world of men, as this is manifested in social/political concerns. Later, Aristotle, too, fled Athens, for he was not about to let the evil of those Athenians who placed all their eggs in politics to “sin twice against philosophy.” This distancing from the political realm by the two greatest thinkers that the world has known serves as an indication of their virtue and good will, both qualities that most modern intellectuals abhor. To embrace the two aforementioned qualities, I believe, is the greatest compliment that can be bestowed on those who sincerely embrace a life of reason. This is also unarguably a key point in the foundation of western democracies.

Fortunately, western democracies have been founded and defended by the common sense and moral principles of thinkers who possessed a good will. This has given workers, the men and women who have sweated a great deal in order to create a better world something worth living for. There have been many truly conscientious intellectuals, thinkers who have participated in social/political reflection. Albert Camus comes to mind.

Unfortunately, the majority of intellectuals today are shielded from reality by an asphyxiating megalomania that tries to impose their bloated egos on human reality. Marxist intellectuals are professional craftsmen. They seek the greatest common denominator in terms of what will secure them the greatest return. This means that these intellectuals will only defend societies where they are venerated, but where they do not have to be held accountable for their self-congratulating megalomania. These individuals are like spoiled children who must get their way at all cost. They refuse to accept that truth, reason, and simple common sense must earn their keep in open and democratic societies. Thus, Marxist and other leftist intellectuals are very comfortable in trading-in moral conscience in return for being placed in positions of high esteem in totalitarian systems of government. A quick glance at the last hundred years of western history easily bears this out. In this information age, it is next to impossible to ignore historical facts. One of the most lasting lessons bestowed on western democracies is the Socratic dictum which stresses that in order to improve the world one must first improve oneself through a reflective moral conscience. Yet this requires humility, and something that most intellectuals lack, a good will.

Vladimir Solovyov’s (1853-1900) insightful work, The Crisis of Western Philosophy, can enlighten us today with its reference to man’s philosophical disposition toward truth, as well as our mania for collective, mass movements. Man’s history is the history of ideas, he tells us. Ideas pertain to individuals and only later do they become disseminated into culture and society. The negation of this fundamental truth is tantamount to asserting that birds are capable of flight not due to their having wings but to the fact that they live on a planet with wind: “Philosophical knowledge is expressly an activity of the personal reason or the separate person in all the clarity of this person’s individual consciousness.”

Solovyov’s contention is that philosophical vocation is irreconcilable with the political Party-line that dictates how and what a thinker ought to think. Commitment to the Party mentality violates the notion that the genuine man-of-letters, or intellectuals, ought to be free-thinkers first and foremost.

Sincere intellectuals are individuals who demand the free air that thought in return demands of them. The intellectual as humanist is primarily the practitioner of common sense and good will. Sartre’s foray into the exotic and “romantic” world of Cuban communism must have seemed to him like an exalted personal moment, given his perceived self-importance in propelling forth the cause of man’s universal suffrage. This is the point when Sartre’s radical ideology came into conflict with his moral sense. The essence of this very kind of conflict was the culprit that also brought Sartre’s and Camus’ friendship to a holt. Sartre tells his side of the story in an article entitled, Reply to Albert Camus, which appeared in the August, 1952 issue of “Les Temps Modernes.”  Sartre’s article is a reply to a prior essay by Camus entitled, A Letter to the Editor of Les Temps Modernes that had previously appeared in that same periodical. In his merciless article Sartre, as well as other French communist intellectuals attacked Camus of being a bourgeois. Imagine that. This is interesting, for of the two men, it was Camus who was born and grew up in abject poverty, while Sartre, the enfant terrible of the Parisian café scene, never held a job. Camus’ criticism has to do with Sartre’s defense of the Communist party, this, vis-à-vis Soviet totalitarianism.

It is very important that we take a keen interest in deciphering truth from falsehood today. We should be allowed to witness prime examples of the devastation that nihilism and a penchant for destruction have brought about in human history, and especially in the last decade. Let us reflect as to what exactly are the function, purpose, and responsibility of intellectuals in democratic and open societies in our time?

Pedro Blas Gonzalez, Ph.D. is a Professor of Philosophy at Barry University

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