INTELLECTUALS & THE DIVISION OF LABOR--SARTRE ET AL

[Ralph Dumain]

At 10:34 AM 7/2/97 -0400, kenneth.mackendrick wrote:
>I take it from this post that what you hate about postmodernism, 
>heidegger, and french intellectuals in general is an apparent 
>denigration of reason.  However your sweeping statements about 
>postmodernism certainly do not do justice to the diversity of writers 
>on the subject - as do your comments about existentialism and 
>heidegger.  I'm not defending postmodernism, heidegger, or "french" 
>intellectualism (whatever the hell that might be) but would simply like 
>you to further expand on what makes these "criminals" so criminal?

Ken, you're working my last nerve.  I can see I won't be able to put off
indefinitely my harangue against the current attack on the Enlightenment,
which prepares as it did before the ideological basis for fascism.  I don't
care if left-liberals are the ones who are doing it, they are still thugs.
I'm going to sum it up standing on one foot, because my time is short and my
patience is shorter: self-centered, alienated intellectuals can play games
pretending that thought is useless, the world is incomprehensible, and that
people are only automatons and cannot aspire to anything higher, but the
average working-class person is in need of that very coherence, that
intellectual discipline that the intellectuals tosses aside in his indulgent
self-abasement.  The battle for enlightenment is constant and ongoing; it
did not stop in the 18th century.  Another skirmish is won each time a
person leaves custom, superstition, fear, and conformity behind and begins
to think for himself, and in certain parts of the world, for herself above
all.  The intellectuals will not fight for these values; they sold out in
the 1920s-1940s, and they are selling out now.  The postmodern shits will
not fight for them.  Only a self-satisfied, careerist little prick like
Stanley Fish could smugly write a book called THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FREE
SPEECH AND IT'S A GOOD THING TOO.  Who's going to defend freedom of thought
and freedom of the press?  It's some anonymous little librarian in Georgia
who has a life-and-death stake in the issues that are being fought over.
_I'm_ one of these anonymous people, so fuck you, buddy.