The Burden of Responsibility
Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Using the lives of the three outstanding French intellectuals of the twentieth century, renowned historian Tony Judt offers a unique look at how intellectuals can ignore political pressures and demonstrate a heroic commitment to personal integrity and moral responsibility unfettered by the difficult political exigencies of their time.
Through the prism of the lives of Leon Blum, Albert Camus, and Raymond Aron, Judt examines pivotal issues in the history of contemporary French society—antisemitism and the dilemma of Jewish identity, political and moral idealism in public life, the Marxist moment in French thought, the traumas of decolonization, the disaffection of the intelligentsia, and the insidious quarrels rending Right and Left. Judt focuses particularly on Blum’s leadership of the Popular Front and his stern defiance of the Vichy governments, on Camus’s part in the Resistance and Algerian War, and on Aron’s cultural commentary and opposition to the facile acceptance by many French intellectuals of communism’s utopian promise. Severely maligned by powerful critics and rivals, each of these exemplary figures stood fast in their principles and eventually won some measure of personal and public redemption.
Judt constructs a compelling portrait of modern French intellectual life and politics. He challenges the conventional account of the role of intellectuals precisely because they mattered in France, because they could shape public opinion and influence policy. In Blum, Camus, and Aron, Judt finds three very different men who did not simply play the role, but evinced a courage and a responsibility in public life that far outshone their contemporaries.
“An eloquent and instructive study of intellectual courage in the face of what the author persuasively describes as intellectual irresponsibility.”—Richard Bernstein, New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York University European studies professor Judt (Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944-1956) fashioned this book from three lectures he gave at the University of Chicago that presented an overview of some of the more complex political currents of modern France. He starts with a much vilified figure of the 1930s who is now largely ignored--the first Jewish (and Socialist) French premier, Leon Blum. Judt argues--not entirely convincingly--that Blum was more of a politician and less of an esthete than is generally thought. After Blum, Judt turns to a nemesis of the 1968 generation, the French conservative Raymond Aron. While Judt's discussion of individuals' changing fortunes provides an interesting view of the French intelligentsia, he overstates matters when he claims that Aron was universally accepted in France at the time of his death. In a somewhat less original contribution, Judt discusses the familiar figure of Albert Camus, apparently because he serves as a chronological link between the other two. Naturally, the brushstrokes are very broad in these brief studies, and many of Judt's assertions, particularly those that speculate about motive, are open to argument (Does anyone else think that Camus' journals are "funny"?). Since full-length studies of Blum and Aron are still awaiting translation from the French, these opinionated lectures serve as a useful incentive to read further on their subjects.
