Burden of Responsibility

Using the lives of three French intellectuals of the 20th century, this text looks at how intellectuals can ignore political pressures and demonstrate a heroic commitment to personal integrity unfettered by the difficult exigencies of their time. The text examines issues such as: antisemitism and the dilemma of Jewish identity; political and moral idealism in public life; the Marxist movement in French thought; the traumas of decolonization; the disaffection of the intelligentsia; and the insidious quarrels rending Right and Left. Particular emphasis is put on Leon Blum's leadership of the Popular Front and his defiance of the Vichy governments, on Albert Camus's part in the Resistance and Algerian War, and on Raymond Aron's cultural commentary and opposition to the facile acceptance by many French intellectuals of communism's utopian promise.