Key insights from
Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky
By Paul Johnson
Audio available
16 minute read
Published May 1, 2007
What you'll learn
Intellectuals have become an increasingly formative force in our world over the past several centuries. Some thinkers have retained cult-like followings even years after their deaths. But what were these famous intellectuals, self-proclaimed friends of humanity, actually like? Was their treatment of those closest to them as lofty and magnanimous as the sentiments they expressed in writing?
Key insights
- • What you'll learn
- 1 Several centuries ago, a secular priesthood of intellectuals began to replace the traditionally religious elite.
- 2 Rousseau was the first intellectual to systematically deride and exploit the rich through manipulative ingratitude.
- 3 No one has had more of an impact on modern history than Karl Marx.
- 4 Tolstoy found the peasants in his novels to be far more pliable and cooperative than the serfs on his own estate.
- 5 Relying on his verbal grandeloquence, Sartre managed to emotionally subdue and manipulate the twentieth century’s most famous feminist.
- 6 Detachment from the real world has led to an extremism among intellectuals that continues to harm society and politics.
Similar titles
