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Past imperfect : French intellectuals, 1944-1956
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
Swept up in the vortex of communism, French postwar intellectuals developed a blind spot to Stalinist tyranny. Albert Camus, who had been an authentic moral voice of the Resistance, pretended not t...
Swept up in the vortex of communism, French postwar intellectuals developed a blind spot to Stalinist tyranny. Albert Camus, who had been an authentic moral voice of the Resistance, pretended not to know about the crimes and terrors of the Soviet Union. Jean-Paul Sartre perverted logic to make an apologia for the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Simone de Beauvoir called for social change to be brought about in a single convulsion, or else not at all. Foolish French thinkers, suffering ""self-imposed moral anesthesia, "" defended the credibility of the show trials in Stalinized Eastern Europe.
Details
- Creator
- Tony Judt
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
-
- New York : New York University Press, [2011]
- ©2011
- Physical Details
-
- 1 online resource (x, 348 pages)
- data file
- ISBNs
- 0814743560, 9780814743928, 9780814743577, 9780814743560, 0814743579, 0814743927
- OCLC
- ocn744354077
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- pt. 1. The force of circumstance? -- Decline and fall : the French intellectual community at the end of the Third Republic -- In the light of experience : the "lessons" of defeat and occupation -- Resistance and revenge : the semantics of commitment in the aftermath of liberation -- What is political justice? : philosophical anticipations of the Cold War -- part 2. The blood of others -- Show Thais : political terror in the East European mirror, 1947-1953 -- The blind force of history : the philosophical case for terror -- Today things are clear : doubts, dissent, and awakenings -- part 3. The treason of the intellectuals -- The sacrifices of the Russian people : a phenomenology of intellectual Russophilia -- About the East we can do nothing : of double standards and bad faith -- America has gone mad : anti-Americanism in historical perspective -- We must not disillusion the workers : on the self-abnegation and elective affinities of the intellectual -- part 4. The Middle Kingdom -- Liberalism, there is the enemy -- On some peculiarities of French political thought -- Gesta Dei per Francos : Theú Frenchness of French intellectuals -- Europe and the French intellectuals -- The responsibilities of power -- Conclusion: Goodbye to all that?
Subjects
- France -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
- Intellectuals -- France -- History -- 20th century.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Influence.
- Communism -- History -- 20th century.
- France -- Politics and government -- 1945-1958.
- France -- Moral conditions -- History -- 20th century.
- France -- Relations -- Europe.
- Europe -- Relations -- France.
- Europe -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
- Europe -- Politics and government -- 1945-