Intellectual paths in central Europe - By SAMUEL ABRAHÁM
The position of the
intellectual in central Europe today is quite marginal and muted. One way to
understand it is to examine the legacy of two towering figures, Václav Havel
and Viktor Orbán, who represent diametrically opposed reactions to the
post-communist politics which followed 1989. The choices and legacies of both
figures leave contemporary intellectuals in a quandary when addressing the
politics of their respective countries. I propose an alternative, illustrated
by the deeds of an Austrian intellectual and editor, Walter Famler.
But first,
let us compare the status of intellectuals in the west and in central Europe
and then, quoting from a 1996 debate in Kritika & Kontext,
define the concept of the intellectual and the options available during and
after the communist era. In the West, the term ‘intellectual’ has been viewed
with suspicion since Julien Benda’s damning book La Trahison des
Clercs (1927) blamed intellectuals for all the ills of the modern
world. Democratic societies are slightly uncomfortable with intellectuals. It
is stable democratic institutions and not heroic intellectuals that are
supposed to symbolize a grounded political order. Brecht’s remark that one
should pity a country that needs heroes works precisely because such countries
are in a dangerous and dysfunctional state and heroes-intellectuals are sought
and catapulted to the forefront in order to save it.
In recent decades in
the West, in a poignant twist, indicating an almost central European malaise, there
emerged the category of ‘public intellectual’. These individuals enter the political discourse as the
political climate is becoming more and more unpredictable, as the dark demons
of the past in the form of nationalism and neo-fascism feel confident enough to
venture back in a variety of populist disguises to the public square of Western
Europe and North America. Curiously enough, a number of these public
intellectuals have spent an extended time in and have written about central
Europe. Tony Judt, Timothy Garton Ash, Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder directly,
and Bernard Henri-Levi, John Gray and Roger Scruton from a distance – but all
with great interest – have examined the aftermath of fin de siècle central
Europe where, according to some, all the important ideas and ideologies of the
20th century emerged. By default, these still define the present century which,
so far, has offered no new ideas, merely regurgitated the old ones.
And so
these intellectuals, knowing the genesis of demons and angels in central
Europe, are able to eloquently analyze developments on both sides of the
Atlantic. They are aware of the irony that while central Europe is giving up on
the virtues of western liberal democracy, the region’s worst impulses are
gradually infecting the West...
