Intellectual Historian"
Date: Freitag, 9. Februar 2001 22:22
From: H-NET List for News and Announcements [H-ANNOUNCEH-NET.MSU.EDU]

H-IDEAS announces

"A Brave Old World: Utopia, Dystopia, and the Intellectual Historian"

an online discussion with Professor Russell Jacoby, Department of History,
University of California-Los Angeles, beginning Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2001,
at 9:00 a.m. CST

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H-NET JOINS THE DEBATE ON THE
FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
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Russell Jacoby of UCLA will be joining the wider H-Net community from
Feb. 13-19 to field questions and participate in a wider discussion on the
past and future of public intellectuals. The H-Ideas editors hope to spark
discussion on a debate that in recent weeks has spilled into the pages of
Harper's Magazine and The Nation: have public intellectuals
abandoned all hope of a more humane society?

This online discussion is unrelated to, but neatly coincides with, the
publication of a forum, held several weeks ago in New York City, on
the "future of the public intellectual" (The Nation, Feb. 12, 2001).
Panelists in this forum included Russell Jacoby, Stephen Carter, Herbert
Gans, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Christopher Hitchens, John Donatich, and
Steven Johnson. A transcript of their exchange can be viewed at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010212&s=forum.

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AGENDA
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Over the past decade, historian Russell Jacoby has distinguished himself as
an incisive and provocative critic of contemporary liberalism. In his most
recent book, The End of Utopia, Professor Jacoby lamented the retreat of
public intellectuals from once-inspiring Enlightenment ideals. Their inward
turn has hastened the decline of a critically-engaged progressive politics:
"radicals have lost their bite," he wrote, "and liberals their
backbone."[1]

Two months ago, in an article printed in Harper's Magazine, Professor
Jacoby focused his critique on early twentieth-century thinkers, including
Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper. Revulsion at Nazism and Soviet
Communism fueled in these intellectual historians a deep skepticism of
utopian platitudes. But despite the defeat of Nazism, the retreat from
utopianism continued unabated. Jacoby finds contemporary intellectuals
awash in a "convenient cynicism" that "dismiss[es] utopian visionaries as
dangerous cranks." Lost is the spirit of hope that "inequality and
suffering are not inherent to the human condition, that a more humane
society is possible."[2]

The H-Ideas editors have invited Professor Jacoby to help us address
a vital question, one that transcends the putative boundaries between
politics and the practice of the history of ideas:

Have public intellectuals--specifically, intellectual historians--abandoned
all hope of a more humane society?

NOTES