著作远离事实
马克思对于事实证据的态度模棱两可，就像他对待黑格尔的哲学一样。一方面，他耗费数十年生命在收集事实，累积成一百本以上厚厚的笔记，但这些都是在图书馆、在蓝皮书（译注：指英国政府或议会报告书）中找到的事实。至于用自己的眼睛与耳朵、透过检视这个世界与居住其中的人们而发现的事实，引不起马克思的兴趣。他无可救药地全然埋首案牍之中，地球上没有任何事物能让他离开图书馆与研究。他对贫穷与剥削的兴趣可追溯至一八四二年秋天，当时他二十四岁，写了一系列文章谈规范当地农民捡柴权利的法律。据恩格斯所言，马克思告诉他：「是他对于盗林相关法令的研究，加上对摩塞尔（Moselle）地区农民阶级的探讨，使他的注意力从纯政治转向经济状况，进而转向社会主义。」但并无证据显示马克思与农民、地主实际交谈过，或看过当地的状况。同样地，他在一八四四年为金融周刊《前瞻》写过一篇谈西里西亚织工苦况的文章，但他从未去过西里西亚，而且就我们所知，他也从未与他所描述的任何织工交谈过——如果他真这么做过，那就太不像马克思了。马克思一生都在写财金与工业方面的文章，但他只认识两个有财金与工业背景的人。一个是在荷兰的叔叔飞利浦（Lion Philips），他是一位成功的商人，所创办的公司后来成为飞利浦电器公司这家大企业。如果马克思能花点时问去了解，飞利浦叔叔对整个资本主义进程的看法既博闻又有趣，但他只请益过作者: mango 时间: 2013-8-4 12:58
约翰逊的这本书与我们当今的“潮流”——鄙视知识分子，嘲笑高学历，颇有契合之处。比如，眼下网上常有人将教授戏称为“叫兽”，而大众媒体也的确不是披露某些教授的无耻言行。一个浮躁拜金的社会出现招摇撞骗、德行有亏的知识分子是在不足为奇。然而我们也不能以“一颗老鼠屎坏了一锅汤”的态度把一锅汤都倒掉，相反，在看到食堂的饭菜中有虫子、有铁丝、有创可贴的时候，还要淡定地把它夹到一边，面不改色地把剩下的菜吃完，这种大无畏的态度才能确保那些期望自己有一天也成为一盘菜的人不致丧失前进的动力和信心。简单说，约翰逊者中选取一小撮知识分子、且之论及其私生活中的负面因素的做法，让人难以信服。专门说话坏而不肯定其学术成就，有避重就轻之嫌，至少也落得个不中肯的评价。
不过，除方法论上有缺陷之外，这本书的价值也要予以肯定。作者搜集这些大八卦肯定花了不少力气，虽然只论及了一小部分知识分子，但打破公众心目中的神话本身就是值得赞赏的，特别对于只对这些人的名声一知半解、对其私生活一无所知的读者，尤其有益。本来，卢梭、雪莱、托尔斯泰、海明威、罗素、萨特、易卜生、布莱希特，这些人物可算如雷贯耳了，即使不把他们当做高高在上的神一样的存在，也会敬畏他们当年的影响的。然而，读过此书，忍不住要感慨：他们也只是普普通通的人啊，有欲望、有弱点，更让人难以接受的是，他们在实际生活中的所作所为甚至与其所鼓吹的原则恰恰相反，即便在一般的道德标准中，那也是德行有亏、不值得尊敬的。这就提醒我们，不要轻易地成为某某人、某某理论的盲目信徒，更要警惕那些华丽的、仿佛正在深入人心的言论是否只是作者的胡说八道。在本书的最后，约翰逊写道：“任何时候我们必须首先要记住知识分子惯常忘记的东西：人比概念更重要，人必须处于第一位，一切专制主义中最坏的就是残酷的思想专制。”作者在试图论述他自己的观点的时候，远比絮叨那些情节雷同的八卦有趣，可惜这些观点的论述并没要占太大篇幅，往往看得还不过瘾的时候就戛然而止了。
书中提到卢梭是集权主义的发端，这个提法并不新鲜，但从本书中也看不到充分的论证和解释。无论从学术上、还是文字上，这本书都没有什么特别出彩的地方，但这个话题，不得不说很吸引人。这也是我能耐着性子把后面根本不知道是谁的威尔逊、高兰茨、赫尔曼等人的内容也读了一遍的原因。说实在的，我觉得光看杨正润的序就可以对本书的主要内容有大概把握了，甚至读完全书，又读了一遍序，越发觉得序很好。
读完书之后，更想读一下书中提到的人物的作品了，以前只是听说，从没想过自己去看看。先列几本备着，也不知是否有时间看：
海明威：《太阳照样升起》、《永别了，武器》
萨特：《恶心》
罗素：《西方哲学史》，这书买了好长时间都没看……
索尔仁尼琴《古拉格群岛》和加缪的《局外人》，这两本书是联想到的：P
啊，对了，我本以为作者骂了那么多个人，咋没骂马克思呢，原来也骂了的…… 作者: Eric· 时间: 2013-8-25 01:30
Somebody once said our eyes do not show a lack of sense of beauty, but a lack of discovery. Apparently, it's an undoubtful guide to Paul Johnson and his controversial book Intellectuals, only what he want to discover is not beauty, but scandals and gossips.
The book was first published in London in 1988, when the Conservative Party and and Ms. Thatcher were in charge of the British parliament and government. It aroused a heat debate and controversy on both side of the Atlantic Ocean. The New York Times Book Review said this book "revels in all the wicked things these great thinkers have done, and the reveling parts of the book are great fun to read."
That is definitely true. In his book, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Russell, Brecht, Sartre and other influential "secular intellectuals" are not even a normal person. The nature they share in common are cold, angry, arrogant, narcissistic, sexual perversion. If there are anything more exciting to know that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in victim of hypospadias, I don't think so or else Mr. Johnson did not find it.
To definite the term "secular intellectual" is an interesting task. First of all, they are intellectual. Literally, it means a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity. But they are not just intellectuals, they are a group of people, a secular people. It means that they are not saints, like in the Middle Ages, who preferred to meditate in a cave of nowhere, and died without anybody noticed. They are people with thoughts. Being a genius doesn't mean they are perfect.
However, the whole point of being is to trash intellectuals who idealizes the pursuit of freedom (either in behavior, in intellectual pursuits, from society). Mr. Johnson admitted that it was unfair to use the private lives of individuals to judge the strength of their thoughts, but nonetheless he spent the entire book documenting the deficiencies of men who talked big and lived meanly. The quality of the men never matched the beauty of their vision, prose, or poetry.
Being one of the most influential intellectuals of 20th century, Mr. Johnson must have a vivid impression on what what intellectuals are. In 1998, ten years after the first print of this book, Mr. Johnson was revealed to be having an eleven-year affair with writer Gloria Stewart. Ms. Stewart went public with the affair to the newspapers after what she saw as Johnson’s hypocrisy over his views on morality, religion and family values and also alleged that Johnson liked erotic spanking.
This is far more spicier than to know the scandals of somebody died decades ago. But this can not deny the great ideas and books Mr Johnson contribute to human history and culture. Intellectuals are one of the mortals. Flaws are inevitable to mortals. We treasure their great gift and honor their contribution to the improvement of human beings, and for that, who will care about how many mistresses Shelley had, or if Karl Marx had a illegitimate child.
The big conclusion of Mr. Johnson is that "one of the principle lesson of our tragic century , which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity , is -- beware intellectuals." He thought the intellectuals just need to concentrate on their essays and researches, and leave the politics and reality alone. Mr. Johnson must like scholasticism from the bottom of his heart. Because only at that time, the intellectuals are pure and devoted. All they need to do was to calculate whether the God can created a stone he can not move.
Look at the intellectuals we should "beware" of: Rousseau, the father of the French Revolution; Shelley and Russell, radical libertarianist; Sartre, Wilson and Hemingway, famous for their left-wing stand; Tolstoy, the God's elder brother and a demonstrant against aristocracy; Marx, no need to say more. Apparently, Mr. Johnson warned us to beware of those who resent the corruption and injustice of the contemporary society, and those who hold the best wishes and ideals to establish a better world.
It is true that there were a lot of suffering during the past two centuries, and there were a series of frustration on the way to build that better world. But bad people do bad things. As much as I detest social relativism, post-modernism, and religious dogma, I can’t fault these ideas as causing mass effects. I can, however, fault the men who, upon gaining power to commit atrocities, cloak their acts in the trappings of a recognizable philosophy. To suggest that terrorists or dictators valued life until reading a book seems to be placing the cart before the horse.
Famous for his conservative stand both in his books and political ideas, Mr. Johnson clearly decided to follow his heart when he wrote this book. There 's no such an issue as anti-intellectual in the book. Revolution or counter-revolution, that's the main point of it. The up-rising of the neo-conservatism during the past decade is certainly a sign of the right-turning of the western intellectuals.
But to me, I still hold the belief that the responsibilities of intellectuals are crucial to the society. After the end of dark ages, intellectuals are consciously take the job to shape the world, generation after generation. I think the main problem of contemporary intellectuals, if not over worried, is that the corruption of their faith, horizon, and sense of responsibility instead of private life or morality. I do agree with Mr. Johnson for one thing: "The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas." The brightest future of human beings depends of the varieties of idea, if the intellectuals today can still create some.作者: 天才在 时间: 2013-9-5 02:06
卢梭是一个自恋、自私、自大的疯子，他的生殖器先天畸形。他生下来就有尿道下裂症，尿道上面裂开，直通腹表，成年之后，尿道变窄，不得不用一根导管。他在生活中遇到的最大问题就是，当他混迹于上流社会的高雅场所时，在觉得想要解手的时候无处可去。一群女士包围着他，卢梭来到庭院，贵妇的女仆们看着他，有时他只能在人们的视线中解手，“还会溅到一些贵族穿着白袜的腿上。”