De intellectueel als ideoloog. Riskant, maar toch aanbevelenswaardig

Samenvatting

In his speech given at the U of Antwerp (Belgium) in 1993, "The intellectueel als ideoloog: Kritiek van de politieke intelligentie" (The Intellectual as an Ideologue: Criticism of the Political Intelligentia), Aldus Van Doorns noted that among the losers of the collapse of communism in 1989 were those Western intellectuals who had openly sided with the Marxist regimes of Eatern Europe. However, he maintained that intellectuals still have a function on the political scene & should reorient themselves to thinking about democracy. His criticisms were directed more toward leftist intellectuals than toward intellectuals in general. He saw the political intelligentsia as straddling the two worlds of philosophical systems on the one hand & the practical world of organizations & parties on the other. In this light, it become necessary to put the blame for what happened in Eastern Europe's communist experiment at least partially on the intellectuals. M. Meeks