1st Edition

The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals Evil, Enlightenment, and Death

By Harry Redner Copyright 2016

    This fourth instalment of Harry Redner's tetralogy on the history of civilization argues that intellectuals have a brilliant past, a dubious present, and possibly no future. He contends that the philosophers of the seventeenth century laid the ground for the intellectuals of the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. They, in turn, promoted a fundamental transformation of human consciousness: they literally intellectualized the world. The outcome was the disenchantment of the world in all its cultural dimensions: in art, religion, ethics, politics, and philosophy.

    In this fascinating study, Redner demonstrates how secularization took the sting out of both the dread and promise of an afterlife and intellectuals learned to die without the hope of immortality popularized by philosophy and religion. Ultimately, they produced the ideologies that generated the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, which subsequently exterminated these intellectuals through mass murder on a scale never before experienced. The book traces the sources of this fatal entanglement and goes on to examine the contemporary condition of intellectuals in America and the world.

    Wherein lies the future of the intellectuals? Redner suggest that in the present state of globalization, dominated by technocrats, experts, and professionals, their fate remains uncertain.

    Preface
    Introduction
    Part I: Evil and the Tragedy of the Intellectuals
    1 How Intellectuals Arrived at Radical Evil
    Section I—From Ideologies to Exterminism
    Section II—From Ideals to Ideologies
    Section III—From Philosophy to Revolution
    2 The Psychology and Sociology of Radical Evil
    Section I—Intellectual Hatred Is the Worst
    Section II—The Victimization Process
    Section III—How to Succeed by Evil Means
    3 On How to Judge Radical Evil Doers
    Section I—A Reading of Pascal
    Section II—Historical Varieties of Evil
    Section III—On a Fortuitous Misreading of Kant
    Section IV—Pascal's Premonition of Radical Evil1
    Part II: Enlightenment and the Triumph of the Intellectuals1
    4 The Varieties of Intellectuals in Europe
    Section I—Intellectuals in General
    Section II—Intellectuals and the Enlightenment
    Section III—Intellectuals in France
    Section IV—Intellectuals in Germany and Russia
    Section V—Intellectuals in England and Scotland
    5 The Intellectualization of the World
    Section I—Intellectualization of Politics,
    Philosophy, and Religion
    Section II—Intellectualization of Morals
    Section III—Intellectualization of the Arts
    6 The Fall of the Intellectuals in Europe and America
    Section I—Pride before the Fall
    Section II—The Last of the Intellectuals
    Section III—New World Intellectuals
    Section IV—Intellectuals and Technocrats
    Part III: Death and Afterlife
    7 Death in History
    Section I—The Death of Hume
    Section II—Representations of Death throughout the Ages
    Section III—Borkenau and Freud
    8 De-demonization and Democracy
    Section I—Plato and Paul and the Devil Himself
    Section II—The Birth of Democracy from the
    Spirit of Enlightenment
    9 The Many Faces of Death
    Section I—Mass Mechanical Death
    Section II—Modern Death and the Afterlife
    10 The Return of the Intellectuals
    Section I—Intellect and Intelligence
    Section II—Generalist Intellectuals
    Index

    Biography

    Harry Redner