Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain [Hardcover]

Stefan Collini is one of the leading intellectual historians currently at work, as is well evidenced by his prior books, particularly "English Pasts" and "Public Moralists--1850-1930" (both recently reissued by Oxford). This book is quite long (and even perhaps too long at over 500 pages), and Oxford has selected a compact typeface which can be tiring to read. The title is related to the author's desire to explore what he believes is a misconcenption that intellectuals never have played much of a role in British life. As is to be expected, one problem for an American reader (unless he be quite conversant with British intellectual history of the last several centuries) is lack of familiarity with many of the individuals discussed.

The author tackles this issue in a number of ways. He first studies the evoluton and use of the term "intellectual" in Britain; then compares it with French developments. He then goes back into British intellectual history to demonstrate that more "intellectual" activity was going on than is generally recognized. For example his chapter on two periodicals ("New Age" and "The Nation") during the 1907-22 period very well develops this argument. Along the way, a whole cast of characters appear: Priestley, the Woolfs, Huxley, F.R. Leavis, Laski, Trevelyan, Annan, Berlin and Shils to name just a few. Next, Collini discusses comparable development in several other countries, including Germany (quite a good analysis), France (too many French quotes even though translated tend to disrupt one's concentration), and the USA (where he demonstrates a severe distaste for Judge Posner's "Public Intellectuals").

One interesting section involves profiles of T.S. Eliot, R.G. Collingwood (very well done), Orwell, A.J.P. Taylor (a knockout discussion), and A.J. Ayer (very solid but too short). Collini finishes up with an interesting analysis of the impact of academic specialization and the role of celebrity in pop culture and how these factors have negatively impacted upon the current role of intellectuals in Britain.

A challenging volume, but reflecting the usual Collini traits of unsurpassed research, sparkling insights, and an infectious style.

Collini among other things sets out to prove that the British have been a bit modest about their own intellectuals, believing that they have not really had any. i.e. The British have thought of themselves as too narrow and practical, as opposed for example to their broad-minded, richly speculative cousins across the Channel. Collini says that this denial too relates to a sense that our world has lost its generalists, and that the ever- increasing specialization of the scientific and academic worlds on one side, and the glitz celebrity culture on the other side have simply left no place for the man of mind who can reach the broader public.
This thesis I must admit , or rather the idea that the British would think themselves without intellectuals surprises me. Even good old non- British me can give a very long list of people professionally qualified in some narrow specialalization who had and have the broader public ear. I think first of all of Sir Isiah Berlin trained as an analytic philosopher and one of the greatest figures in the area known as the 'history of ideas'. Sir Isiah certainly was in his BBC lectures a broad communicator across the academic- wider public divide. But there are others, some of whom such as Orwell and Bertrand Russell Collini gives chapters to in this work. And in fact one of the much discussed people in this work C.P. Snow even when lamenting about the gap between the two cultures, the scientific and the literary was somehow communicating across them both.
All this is not to deride Collini's painstaking research and innumerable insights, but rather to wonder when he has proven a thesis which needs no proof, or disproven one which needs no disproof.
In any case the talk about intellectuals, and about the meanings of being an intellectual are so considerable in this work than anyone who has interest in intellectuals, or aspires to be an intellectuals, or thinks of themselves as an intellectual, will have something to read and learn from here.
And this when I would add one perhaps irrelevant note. Collini does not like Julien Benda's classical 'The Treason of the Intellectuals' too much, nor accept the theory that Intellectuals promoted the between- the- wars totalitarian movements. But one thing Benda does certainly point to is that being an 'intellectual' a person of great specialized skill who can communicate to a wider audience on matters outside his own specialization, is no guarantee of virtue and goodness. The very highest achievements in work of the mind can go with the most abominable values and poorest human judgment.
So one real basic point for the broader public to hold in mind is the fact that someone is an 'intellectual' or 'an authority' does not mean that they are to be blindly followed, or unthinkingly listened to.
A healthy skepticism to even the 'most well- known intellectuals' is in order. This by the way is true today ( Consider Richard Dawkins sweeping negative pronouncements on religion, or the enthusiasm which Noam Chomsky pied- pipers for the most totalitarian regimes in the universe) as it has always been.
I do not know if this means that one should adopt William Buckley's famous recommendation of opening the Boston telephone and choosing the first names that come up, as preferable to relying on the staff of Harvard College, for electing public officials- but it does suggest that each and every layman should be a bit of a skeptic, perhaps a bit of an intellectual , in listening to the 'guidance and wisdom' of those who pronounce from on- high.

This book by Stefan Collini, Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University, is a superb discussion of the question of intellectuals in Britain.

He questions the idea that intellectuals are uniquely absent or insignificant in Britain. According to this `absence thesis', part of our `national character' is that we are uniquely pragmatic, unintellectual and practical.

In a brilliant chapter on George Orwell, Collini notes that Orwell often adopted the manner of a public-school bully and concludes, "he encouraged an undiscriminating hostility to intellectuals as such, and he was then surely guilty of that most unlovely and least defensible of inner contradictions, the anti-intellectualism of the intellectual."

Collini rightly questions a class analysis which sees the intelligentsia as a separate social stratum. Unfortunately, he fails to see that intellectuals work for a living (writing is work, as Marx observed) and so are members of the working class.

Collini denies that a ruling class exists, but offers no better explanation of how society is run, although he notes `global capitalism's relentless search for profit'. He also observes that the `absence thesis' does express the thought that intelligence, imagination and justice are not Britain's governing principles.

He decries `the posturing and self-importance involved in the post-war French intellectuals' prominence in their society'. He is not deriding those French intellectuals who supported, or kept quiet about, the French state's colonial wars against Vietnam and Algeria, but those, like Jean-Paul Sartre, who opposed these wars. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (whom Collini never mentions) broke through the censorship to reveal these wars' inevitable crimes. Britain's intellectuals almost all ignored the British state's similar wars against Malaya and Kenya. Collini too ignores all these wars (he only mentions Algeria, just once), which enables him to insult those who worked for peace.

He writes of `the unglamorous obligation to try to be realistic in identifying the lesser evil'. As a description of political duties, this is far too vague. Wasn't Sartre realistic in calling for the French to leave Algeria, as they did in the end? Are we only to identify the `lesser evil' among the parliamentary parties? Isn't this making a choice of paint when the house is crumbling?

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