"You cannot evaluate the ideas of a thinker by his personal life", rui a. told me recently over dinner. I cannot disagree more. If the ideas intellectuals do present as solutions to the problems of mankind are truly good, they should be good in the first place for themselves, right?.
The first thing I do when I hear or read of a new idea to improve humankind is to check if its author, at any period during his lifetime, lived according to it. A lot of intellectuals fail this crucial test. There an extensive literature on the subject. Paul Johnson's Intellectuals is a classic and so is Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims.
To name only a few, Karl Marx, the great defender os proletarians, had a proletarian at home - his maid - for the whole of his life. He never paid her, though. Jean Jacques Rousseau, the great educator of mankind, never educated his own five children; rather, he abandoned them all. Ludwig von Mises, the great defender of free markets never lived by the free market; rather he lived on government jobs and on the altruism of the Volcker Foundation.
The first thing I do when I hear or read of a new idea to improve humankind is to check if its author, at any period during his lifetime, lived according to it. A lot of intellectuals fail this crucial test. There an extensive literature on the subject. Paul Johnson's Intellectuals is a classic and so is Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims.
To name only a few, Karl Marx, the great defender os proletarians, had a proletarian at home - his maid - for the whole of his life. He never paid her, though. Jean Jacques Rousseau, the great educator of mankind, never educated his own five children; rather, he abandoned them all. Ludwig von Mises, the great defender of free markets never lived by the free market; rather he lived on government jobs and on the altruism of the Volcker Foundation.
.
And what to think of that great adversary of religion, which he considered mere superstition, the first of all modern atheist philosophers - David Hume - who himself generated a cult among his atheist followers? Friedrich Hayek, the long time agnostic, requested a Catholic funeral and had one celebrated by a bishop long time his friend (in case of uncertainty, it is preferable to be on the right side). What to think of the chief American libertarian, Murray Rothbard, who ended up his life pointing to Catholic Guatemala as the country which best approached his libertarian ideas?
.
By the way, would you be able to make an estimate of the number of Portuguese intellectuals defending the virtues of free markets in the blogosphere from the security of their government jobs? They are very numerous, indeed.
By the way, would you be able to make an estimate of the number of Portuguese intellectuals defending the virtues of free markets in the blogosphere from the security of their government jobs? They are very numerous, indeed.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário