Peter Levine

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March 16, 2006

Fukuyama and BHL on intellectuals

Thanks to reader Joe Sinatra, here's an interesting dialogue between Francis Fukuyama and Bernard-Henri Lévy (two political theorists who write best-sellers). It ends with an exchange about the role of intellectuals. BHL criticizes neoconservatives--who supported the Iraq intervention for reasons of principle--for lining up with Bush on all other issues (e.g., the death penalty, gay marriage, stem-cell research). Since they are educated and worldly people, surely they can't be against gay rights. BHL suspects they have compromised their principles to gain access to power.

Fukuyama suggests that neoconservatives sincerely agree with Bush on these questions of social policy, much as this might shock a European. And then he makes a more general comment about intellectuals who work in institutions:

The idea that an intellectual must always speak truth to power and never compromise means for ends seems to me a rather naive view of how intellectuals actually behave, and reflects in many ways the powerlessness of European intellectuals and their distance from the real world of policy and politics. Of course, the academy must try to remain an institutional bastion of intellectual freedom that is not subject to vagaries of political opinion. But in the United States, to a much greater degree than in Europe, scholars, academics and intellectuals have moved much more easily between government and private life than in Europe, and are much more involved in formulating, promoting and implementing policies than their European counterparts. This necessarily limits certain kinds of intellectual freedom, but I'm not sure that, in the end, this is such a bad thing.

Fukuyama describes his own time at RAND, where there was no intellectual freedom but many opportunities to influence policy and learn. To which BHL replies:

That's it. I think we have come to heart of what divides us. ... The problem lies with the definition of what you and I call an intellectual, and beyond its definition, its function. Unlike you, I don't think an intellectual's purpose is to run the RAND Corporation or any institution like it. Not because I despise RAND, or because I believe in Kubrick's burlesque portrayal of it. No, I just think that while some people are running RAND, others no more or no less worthy or deserving should be dealing with, shall we say, the unfiltered truth. ... America needs intellectuals with a selfless concern for sense, complexity and truth.

Four observations:

1. One does not have to choose between working in powerful institutions or being fully independent and providing the "unfiltered truth." One can also work within organizations that represent ordinary people or marginalized groups or that grow at the grassroots level. Dewey spent a lot of time in schools and settlement houses. Jane Addams' thought was grounded in even deeper experience. Or consider Dorothy Day or various Marxist intellectuals who have worked inside independent socialist and labor organizations.

2. The independence that BHL prizes is quite hard to find. If you teach in a university, then you work for a powerful institution whose social function is subject to criticism. If you write a best-seller, then you are paid by a big media corporation. Working at RAND is not necessarily more problematic.

3. I believe in truth, but it requires method. Truth doesn't just pop into one's mind, even if one has graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Many methodologies are helpful--among them, what Fukuyama calls the "discipline" of operating in "the real world of power and politics." I haven't read BHL's new book, American Vertigo, but presumably his method there is to travel and observe for short periods. I find that method quite problematic. (See Marc Cooper's first-person description of BHL in the field.) If BHL developed a complex and novel social theory or collected data (qualitative or quantitative), I would be more impressed by his claim to "truth."

4. Tony Judt is very insightful about "the demise of the continental [European] intellectual.* On May 31, 2003, Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas (together), Umberto Eco, Richard Rorty, and several other leading intellectuals published coordinated essays about Iraq in distinguished European newspapers. The result "passed virtually unnoticed. It was not reported as news, nor was it quoted by sympathizers. No-one implored the authors to take up their pens and lead the way forward. ... The whole project sputtered out. One hundred years after the Dreyfus Affair, fifty years after the apotheosis of Jean-Paul Sartre, Europe's leading intellectuals had thrown a petition--and no one came."

Judt suggests several explanations. Intellectuals can no longer get fired up about social-liberal causes, because their position prevails across Europe. Capitalism remains a target of criticism, but no one knows what to do about it. I would add that most European intellectuals lack the discipline of working inside institutions. Such work would give them more access to truth as well as more credibility.

*Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York, 2005), pp. 785-7

Posted by peterlevine at March 16, 2006 10:19 AM

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Posted by: Peter Levine at March 17, 2006 10:52 AM

Posted by: Joseph Sinatra at March 19, 2006 12:58 PM

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