Few things are as remotely fascinating to (western) intellectuals as themselves. They marvel at their erudition, their cosmopolitan pretensions, the breadth and depth of their empathy with those unlike themselves.
In other words, few groups are as tiresomely narcissistic as western intellectuals.
One thing that many take for granted, indeed seems to be an axiom of intellectual life, is that by its very nature it abjures the kind of close association with one's native land that is exhibited by others. In the frantic, emotional days leading to the opening of hostilities in World War I, a large group of German university professors published an op-ed that was signed by over one hundred professors from all over Germany (it was penned by Adolf von Harnack, the great historian of Christian Dogma; Harnack also wrote the speech given by the Kaiser on the eve of hostilities). During the Nazi period, philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others gave themselves willingly to the cause.
Post-Civil War southern historians cornered the market on antebellum histories of the south and slavery, creating many myths that have taken generations to dispel. Similarly, early post-Cold War historiography is rife with paeans to hard-line anti-communism, with apologias for all sorts of excesses, from McCarthyism to Ronald Reagan.
David Halberstam's history of the decade, The Fifties, details the way ideology and crass politics played a part in the development of the hydrogen bomb. In particular, Edward Teller's insistence on his approach, including really bad mathematics, led to personal battles that included getting Robert Oppenheimer stripped of his security clearance and ejected from the work.
Those not caught up in these moments and movements seem to stand and wonder how it is possible that so many people who seem dedicated to a life of ideas can become so caught up in moments of crass jingoism. A recent work on Japanese intellectuals' responses to the Second World War seems modeled on this same sense that there is something in need of explanation when people who are learned, erudite, have an understanding of the larger world would succumb to the clarion call of nationalism.
I think the answer is simple. They're human beings.
The notion that intellectuals have some kind of exemption from being all sorts of different people, reacting in all sorts of different ways to events is so deeply embedded in intellectual life that this simple, elegant solution continues. Part of it is an old notion, rooted in Greek philosophy, that the life of the mind is the highest, most profound calling human beings can answer. Far more than their proletarian fellows, intellectuals share in something unchangeable, something far greater than the passing of each moment, with its changing wind directions and fads.
Yet, there is another way to look at intellectual life. Accountants are excellent at what they do. So, too, plumbers. I wouldn't expect a plumber to have a deep understanding of Habermas, any more than I would expect most philosophers to know how to weld, or run PVC pipe. That is to say, intellectuals are just folks who are trained in a particular craft - reading and thinking - in the same way that woodworkers are trained with various tools and football players are trained in their varying skills.
The real treason of the intellectuals occurs when they feel their "principled critic" position gives them an angel's eye view of their world, free from the fleeting passions, granting to their words an aura of truth. Whether earnest or disdainful, the idea that there is some dispensation granted folks who think for a living creates false problems, and questions that not only don't need to be asked, but if they are, are easily answered.
Virtual Tin Cup
