Jan 4, 2015
In the last two hundred years Western culture has been shaped by the ideas of such secular intellectuals as Rousseau, Darwin, Marx, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Orwell, Chomsky. But why should anybody listen to Rousseau or Darwin or Marx or Russell? What credentials do they have to tell us what's true?
In his book The Intellectuals, historian Paul Johnson examines their lives and makes clear is that these people have no credibility (1). Their personal lives are characterized by self-centeredness, egoism, arrogance, abuse of others, alcoholism, drugs, sexual immorality, misogyny, financial mismanagement, lying, hypocrisy and on and on the list goes. These were miserable, wicked individuals who didn’t live out their own ideas. Yet others, most probably not knowing the personal character of their mentors, listened and acted on their words plunging the West into the darkness of the 20th and 21st centuries. So who can we trust? Who has the credentials and character such that we can unconditionally trust what they say to be true?
(1) Johnson, Paul (2009-10-13). Intellectuals (P.S.) Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.