Name: The opium of the intellectuals
ISBN: 9780393001068

What Hacker News says

yakubinJul 2023

Marxism has many religion-like qualities. It's been written about in:

Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals

Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind

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yakubinNov 2022

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

It showed me that intellectual curiosity doesn't need to be coupled with abstruse language, that in fact unclear language is not a sign of deep thought, but more likely unclear thought. It showed me that being an optimist isn't stupid, that it's an art and that gloom is not an inevitable consequence of intellect. I was suffering from depression back then. It took me 10 more years to win the battle, but I did it. It was all more about how this book was written, rather than what was written in it.

Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956

Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century

Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind

Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals

Those books taught me that there are quite a few secular religions to be beware of, with all the associated dangers and indeed opium for the mind. They were written with the example of Marxism, but this lesson can be generalised to other ideas, which explain away everything about life and bring a prophesy of things to come. It taught me that the religion I left behind when I was young is not the end, but there are more things to be vigilant about, lest your critical mind becomes anaesthetised and subjugated by the current intellectual orthodoxy.

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

A truly insane book. Prior to reading it I thought that the criticisms coming from "the other side" were caricatures. After reading this book I've known that there truly are people denying the reality of biology and making all sort of twisted reasonings you would have never dreamt of. The political movement associated with this book doesn't let it slip at first, but when I confronted core members of this movement (responsible for most of the political messaging in the press etc.) in my country it turned out that they actually believe that stuff. It disillusioned me about the sort of nonsense people can seriously believe, while carefully not admitting it at first.

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tic_tacMar 2020

While I have not read the Hayek work you mention, it is probably drawn from the same philosophical waters as a work that I recommend to anyone with an interest in this sort of thinking: "The Opium of the Intellectuals" by Raymond Aron. Aron was a French philosopher who contemplated the Intellectuals' fascination and infatuation with socialism and, at the time and place of writing (1950's France), Communism.

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neplusJan 2020

Depends on your definition of practically unknown. With that said, these are the four that immediately spring to mind as being both worth reading and relatively obscure (judging by date of publication in conjunction with being either out of print or with very few star ratings on Amazon).

Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? - Peter Termin, 1975

Termin is still going strong at MIT. His 1975 book was foundational for challenging Friedman on the cause of the Great Depression. Given what was to come in the 1980s this book quickly became overshadowed and destined for obscurity. However, it still provides an appropriate, timely lens to analyze monetary theory without the abstraction that has engrossed economics as of late.

The Supreme Court in the American System of Government - Robert Jackson, 1955

A series of lectures created for a Harvard lecture series in 1954-55 by Justice Jackson. He suddenly died before being able to deliver them, but they were compiled in a book now out of print. Justice Jackson is widely regarded - across the aisle - as one of the most brilliant legal writers of our time (or perhaps of any time). While this book doesn't set out his entire judicial philosophy, or even do what the title says due to his untimely death, it does lay a valuable conception of the proper role of the SCOTUS within the Republic. Also recommended, to see both his pen and intellect in action, are his opinions in Korematsu v. United States and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.

The Opium of the Intellectuals - Aron, 1955

Amazon does a better job of summarizing than I could off the top of my head, so here you go: "Raymond Aron's 1955 masterpiece The Opium of the Intellectuals, is one of the great works of twentieth- century political reflection. Aron shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular religion" and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the truth about social and political reality-in all its mundane imperfections and tragic complexities."

An incredibly difficult read that is worth trying to get through. Brimming with ideas and not without its own pitfalls. Tells the story of 20th Century intellectual history and thought as well as any could, although in a rather indirect way.

The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Aristocracy & Caste in America) - Baltzell, 1987

I'll let Amazon summarize again: "This classic account of the traditional upper class in America traces its origins, lifestyles, and political and social attitudes from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to that of John F. Kennedy. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell describes the problems of exclusion and prejudice within the community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or WASPs, an acronym he coined) and predicts with amazing accuracy what will happen when this inbred group is forced to share privilege and power with talented members of minority groups."

My summary would be: what will happen (hypothetically, remember the date of publication) when an ephemeral class (WASPs) suddenly disappear from their previous pedestal of influence? Prescient, widely applicable to other countries with their own quasi-classes, and deeply interesting for those less familiar with the subject.

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TeeMassiveJun 2021

It is not the first time that certain ideologies were seen having characteristics often associated with religious faith. There this French intellectual named Raymond Aron who wrote a book called "The Opium of the Intellectuals" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opium_of_the_Intellectuals). He also used to be a schoolmate of Sarte.

He goes in very great details (although this is hard to read even for me as a native French speaker) about how his intellectual contemporaries (most of them Marxists) used to believe in the same kind of myths that are usually associated with religion. The proletariat as a messiah, the Left being the road towards Progress and the inevitable fate of Humanity pass to the next stage, that in all societies History is unavoidably leaning towards the same finality, the State has replaced Providence and is seen as a guide that shepherds the people.

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ardy42Apr 2020

I've not read The Opium of the Intellectuals, but was it talking about postwar French Marxism or Soviet Leninism/Stalinism?

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