WHY AMERICA IS RIGHT TO DESPISE INTELLECTUALS:

Adieu to a Philosopher: Remembering Sartre, whose ideas and style shaped a generation of radicals. (Ariel Dorfman, April 11, 2005, LA Times)

I was living in exile in Amsterdam 25 years ago — the night of April 15, 1980, to be precise — when I heard the news that Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the towering intellectual figures of our time, had died. I did not hesitate. Two days later, my wife Angelica and I were on a train bound for Paris and his funeral.

During my late adolescence in Chile and all through the subsequent years of my young adulthood, Sartre had been my guiding light. More than anyone else, he had popularized the existentialism that was all the rage back then, giving it, however, an ethical twist that appealed to so many of my generation worldwide.

Emerging from the bleak, moral landscape that had shown man at his worst during World War II, Sartre demanded that we live in incessant anguish and doubt, while simultaneously proclaiming our equally unrelenting need to be responsible for what we do to ourselves and one another. This stark message was accompanied by an alluring streak of hedonism, a bohemian lifestyle — endless discussions in cafes, rejection of bourgeois values, the giddy embrace of free love — that so many of us tried to imitate.

Unlike Camus, Sartre proved unequal to the task of taking responsibility and besides his personal immorality descended into Marxism. For all the nattering about his independence, having rejected the Father he required a faux father and chose the determism of Marx.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 11, 2005 6:09 AM