“Not only does the intellectual's penchant for tutoring, directing, and regulating promote a regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous is bound to foster an austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom.”
Source: The Ordeal of Change (1963), Ch. 12: "Concerning Individual Freedom" [In this passage "transforms the prosaic achievements of society into Promethean tasks, glorious defeats, tragic epics" is a quotation of Raymond Aron from The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957), p. xiv]
Context: In exceptional cases, like Puerto Rico and Israel, where capital and skills are available, rapid modernization is not incompatible with a considerable measure of individual freedom.
To some extent, the present dominant role of the intellectual in the modernization of backward countries also militates against the prevalence of individual freedom. Not only does the intellectual's penchant for tutoring, directing, and regulating promote a regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous is bound to foster an austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom. The intellectual "transforms the prosaic achievements of society into Promethean tasks, glorious defeats, tragic epics." The strained atmosphere of an eternal drama working up toward a climax and a crisis is optimal for heroes and saints but not for the autonomous individual shaping his life to the best of his ability. The chances are that should an advanced country come into the keeping of the intellectual it would begin to show many of the hectic traits which seem to us characteristic of a backward country in the throes of awakening.
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Eric Hoffer 240
American philosopher 1898–1983Related quotes
Sie möchte formal und material ebenjener Gestalt geistiger Freiheit helfen, die in den herrschenden philosophischen Richtungen keine Stel1e hat.
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 13
1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
vol. 1, p. 131
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)
Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 320–360.
Collected Works
Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), pp. 7-8
" Greek impasse forces early elections and fears of a return to euro crisis https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/greek-impasse-forces-early-elections-and-fears-of-euro-crisis-return/2014/12/29/3be75924-8f4e-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html" (29 December 2014)
Maciunas (1963), Fluxus Manifesto, copies of which were thrown into the audience at the Festum Fluxorum Fluxus, Düsseldorf, February 1963.
1970s, Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder (1976)