Samuel Fitoussi explains why and how intellectuals are often mistaken

You have to talk about Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Similarly, This is one of the most brilliant spirits of his time. However, great master philosopher, Nobel Prize in literature (declined), supreme incarnation of the committed intellectual … Similarly, which was so often cheated by taking the worst parties.

The author of the play Dirty hands. For example, the sum of phenomenological ontiology Being and nothingness Visited the Cuba of Fidel Castro in 1960 and drew sixteen glowing articles. For example, His accomplice, Simone de Beauvoir, in turn described the dictator of the tropics as a “gifted and benevolent philanthrope”. Moreover, Sartre only broke with the Castro regime that a decade later. Consequently, at the time of imprisonment of the poet Heberto Padilla.

The Lighthouse for Humanity En Marche had already defended the USSR. For example, predicted in 1954 that before the end of the decade, the samuel fitoussi explains why how standard of living of the Soviets would be 30 % to 40 % higher than that of the French. However, Later, he will acclaim the Islamic revolution in Iran. Moreover, He had also visited Ayatollah Khomeini twice in his exile of Yvelines. However, The historian of ideas Michel Foucault also pinched it for the theocratic regime of mullahs.

French Samuel Fitoussi serves these bad examples. Meanwhile, dozens of others in his new test Why intellectuals are mistaken, Posted by Éditions de l’Observatoire. Similarly, Sartre is one of the most battered piñatas by the work. In addition, It is naturally found on the cover: the illustration shows it wearing glasses with a cracked glass.

“And if culture, intelligence and education were not wisers of wisdom, but predisposed to error,” said the incipit. However, In the USSR. Similarly, holders of a university diploma were two to three times more likely to support the Communist samuel fitoussi explains why how Party than agricultural workers and semi-qualified workers. In addition, In Cambodia. In addition, the Khmer Rouge, responsible for the death of nearly two million of their fellow citizens, were led by eight French -speaking intellectuals: five teachers, a university professor, a civil servant and an economist. However, All had studied in France in the 1950s. In addition, notably at the Sorbonne, where they had assimilated Sartrian thought on the necessary commitment and violence. Moreover, »»

Samuel fitoussi explains why how

Voluntary blindness

The heavy. Nevertheless, complex subject was explored by illustrious predecessors, including Raymond Aron in Opium of intellectuals (1955), on submission to the myth of the Revolution and the proletariat, and Michel Winock in The century of intellectuals (2015), who already placed Sartre and de Beauvoir on the cover. However, In this monumental fresco. André Gide and Martin du Gard (two other Nobel Prize winners) were among the rare enlightened, fair samuel fitoussi explains why how and almost without faults of ideologicopolitical engagement.

So you had to stand out. Samuel Fitoussi’s work arrives there by his constant references to psychological studies and cognitive sciences.

“I have been interested in the psychology of beliefs for a long time,” explains the author in an interview. Why are the beliefs to which we adhere are not the fairer? Why can nonsense and absurdities impose themselves? Additionally, Why, for example, the German elite was able to be enthusiastic about Nazism? Why were so many French intellectuals blind that it was on Castro. Mao or Stalin, they are royally deceived when the evidences were accessible? So I wanted to understand the dissemination of ideas, the social mechanisms allowing the dissemination of ideas. »»

The young graduate in the economy of Cambridge. HEC works “in finance” in addition to being a columnist at the Figaro. For him. an intellectual is distinguished as “the only individual samuel fitoussi explains why how whose work begins and ends in the sphere of ideas”; In abstraction, what. This presents the convenience of the advantage of being able to refrain from confrontation with reality. In communism, the negation of reality organizes the whole system made of lies and deceptions. Statistics and archives are no exception to ideological fiddling.

“The pilot, if he makes a mistake, his plane crashes,” says Samuel Fitoussi. The bad ideas of the intellectual are not eliminated in contact with reality. On the contrary. when intellectuals are seriously mistaken, while evidence bursts their eyes, they persist and they remain in error for a long time. In this system. when reality does not correspond to the model that the intellectual has in mind, it is necessary to modify reality and not the model. »»

Samuel fitoussi explains why how

Comfort. indifference

The essay highlights mechanisms specific to this universe of abstraction which do not often samuel fitoussi explains why how affect the world of simple earthly earthly mortals. The burden finely dissects the social rationality which pushes to conformism by protecting the reputation of an individual. “often more important for his survival than the accuracy of the ideas to which he adhered”. Scientists can adopt and defend ideas for their social value rather than their assured truth. They also have a lot to lose by changing.

People of the mind are not immune to prejudices, on the contrary. Blindness has more to do with intelligence than with ignorance. Arthur Koestler explained that by adhering younger to Stalinist communism. he had “eyes to see and a spirit trained to distort what he saw”.

The title of the test is intentionally provocative by not saying that of the Intellos are mistaken. but THE intellectuals, all in the same slap bag. It is also a work that could not be in the genre with the samuel fitoussi explains why how references at the bottom of the page. demanding books in biography which obviously aroused debates and criticism in the world of ideas.

“My thesis is not that intellectuals are mistaken all the time. or that they are all mistaken,” said the essayist, admitting that his title was chosen to “punish”. I rather try to explain why they are wrong when they are wrong. I also rely on a number of intellectuals that have shown exceptional lucidity, whose thought and psychological acuity remain timeless. »»

He quotes Raymond Aron, obviously, and then Georges Orwell or Jean-François Revel. Its targets are often also dated from the XX^e century that these admirable major references. The fed fire on some 250 pages especially targets the left of the left. Some right -wing. even far -right scholars, such as the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, are still putting their noses in the powder of their inventory mind. The samuel fitoussi explains why how book recalls that at the 1942 Wannsee conference on the technical organization of the Shoah. half of the participants held a doctorate.

To find more recent examples of what Mr. Fitoussi denounces as prejudices. clichés today, we will prefer his previous test, Woke fiction (Le Cherche Midi, 2023), where he tries to prove that the new ideology of the diverse left “changes our films and our series”, as the subtitle summarizes. What the French call “wokism” (as we say socialism. Nazism) has become an obsession with the French intellectuals which track down this “totalitarianism” of the LGBTQ +pressure groups. The young Fitoussi. who has obviously watched fictions for screens, sees the effects everywhere and especially in the films and series of the United States in fact.

Neologism in “-ism” only appears twice in the new essay. “One of the common points that I see between wokism. formerly communism is the desire to samuel fitoussi explains why how play the role of the social engineer,” he comments in an interview. Liberal democracies may not be satisfactory for the intellectual because it must be limited to descriptive work. He must describe society, but he cannot reorganize it. In more vertical. more authoritarian regimes, the intellectual theorizes dreams dreaming on the paper sheet and the politician applies these theories. Russian anarchist Bakunin said that Marxism was a pedancracy, a regime where pedants, in this case Marxist theorists, led. »»

Samuel fitoussi explains why how

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