Exploring the Ideas of Great Thinkers: From Karl Marx to Noam Chomsky

Brad Butler: One of my favorite books, I had a copy a long time ago but lost it, well, I just bought a new one and I am reading it again because Paul Johnson really shows how all these supposed revered figures of history are really made of clay and have been so destructive to society. These people are still impacting our lives and so this is a must read.

Rousseau, Marx, Ibsen, Sartre....oh the list goes and on so READ THIS BOOK AND LEARN THOSE YOU IDOLIZE MIGHT NOT BE WORTH IDOLIZING!!!

United States on Oct 02, 2023

Kai Lee: This is the first of historian Paul Johnson’s trilogy of books on Intellectuals, Creators, and Heroes. Looking at the names in the contents, it seems obvious that Johnson’s idea of “Intellectuals” in his book is different from the commonly accepted definition, which Cambridge Dictionary defines as “a very educated person who is interested in complicated ideas and enjoys studying and careful thinking”. I looked in vain for his definition in “Intellectuals”. Then, on p.1 of the second of his trilogy, “Creators”, there appears the sentence “I defined an intellectual as someone who thinks ideas are more important than people.”

According to the author, with the decline of clerical power in the eighteenth century, there arose in the last two hundred years a class of secular intellectual who assert that they could diagnose the ills of society and fundamental habits of human beings and cure them with their own unaided intellects and transform them for the better. They were not servants and interpreters of gods but substitutes. The purpose of the book is “an examination of the moral and judgmental credentials of certain leading intellectuals to give such...

United States on Dec 08, 2022

EH: Good for short overview about many intellectuals who have influenced the world.

Canada on Jul 09, 2022

Blaargh: "I was born to be the best friend that ever existed." "I would leave this life with apprehension if I knew a better man than me." "Show me a better man than me, a heart more loving, more tender, more sensitive…" "Posterity will honour me…because it is my due." "I rejoice in myself." "…if there were a single enlightened government in Europe, it would have erected statues to me."

"‘[Woman] is generally stupid, but the Devil lends her brains when she works for him. Then she accomplishes miracles of thinking, farsightedness, constancy, in order to do something nasty." "It is impossible to demand of a woman that she evaluate the feelings of her exclusive love on the basis of moral feeling. She cannot do it, because she does not possess real moral feeling, i.e. one that stands higher than everything."

"We used to think Hitler was wicked when he wanted to kill all the Jews. But Kennedy and Macmillan not only want to kill all the Jews but all the rest of us too. They’re much more wicked than Hitler... I will not pretend to obey a government which is organizing the massacre of the whole of mankind… They are the wickedest people that ever lived in the history of...

United States on Jul 06, 2021

Gerard: This book is very well written and provides many nuggets of indormation about which I was completely unaware, and I read a lot. One definition of intellectual is"someone for whom ideas have emotional importance". The intellectuals portrayed in this book were possessed of ideas and theories which they were convinced should be adopted by the world, simply because they, the intellectuals, advanced them. They possessed 'The Truth'. So convinced were they that their theories would 'free the world' , raise up the downtrodden' that they ignored and maltreated their own spouses and children and close relatives and friends.

Australia on Nov 03, 2020

Ernst: A brilliant book on all accounts. If this was required reading prior to anyone entering university, students wouldn’t be so susceptible to the profound idiocy pedalled by the self-appointed academic intellectuals who are themselves blind to judgement and common sense. To paraphrase Orwell, ‘some ideas are so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them, for no common man could ever be such a fool.’ This book illustrates this truth completely.

Canada on Jan 25, 2020

A G Bush: Quite a read. His main thesis that these intellectuals claimed to love mankind generally but treated people around them miserably is a cautionary tale. Much of their ideology has infused Academia, to its detriment. And impacted the modern world negatively. They have lied, ignored facts, exempted themselves from the rules that they hold everyone else accountable for, and some have been responsible for the modern dictatorships and despots, with hundreds of millions dead. Their "tyranny of vision" has not deterred them from treating ideologies as more important than individuals. Along with their enablers. Overall, their actions don't confirm, rather they contradict their words?

Canada on Jan 29, 2019

AGUC: Paul Johnson se añade a otros autores, como Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, George Orwell, etc. que han señalado y estudiado la aparición, especialmente a partir de J J Rousseau, de los "clérigos" de una nueva "religión atea" que proponen una sociedad utópica desprovista de cualquier mal humano, sociedad utópica sólo conseguible a base de una extrema violencia para forzar la naturaleza humana y la civilización, así como de la miseria moral de los "intelectuales progresistas" (la "intelligentsia") del siglo XX (y lo que va del XXI) en su apoyo a los totalitarismos genocidas, especialmente el socialista comunista ("lo apoyaban no a pesar del Terror Rojo sino, precisamente, por ese Terror como necesario para alcanzar la Utopía"), cuando no la directa organización de tales totalitarismos (como fue el caso de la "intelligentsia" rusa bolchevique, como destaca Richard Pipes en "La Revolución Rusa").

Spain on Jan 09, 2019