ABSTRACT
Idealism and power-hunger, disinterestedness and commitment, the legitimation of the social order and its subversion, autonomy and the readiness to be coopted, the display of critical impulses and their subordination to ideological objectives, reflectiveness and action-orientation—all these are parts of the conflicting images of intellectuals. Tocqueville was only one of many who considered the central problem of intellectuals to be their ambiguous relationship to political power. Almost identical observations have been made about the Russian intelligentsia, its exclusion from politics, inexperience, and resulting propensity to grand illusions and beliefs divorced from social and political realities. This "forced morality of alienation" may be the most obvious source of the political misjudgments and misperceptions of Western intellectuals, or at any rate of large numbers among them. Intellectuals who entertain great liberating ideas and propose alternatives to existing social and political arrangements find idling on the sidelines unsatisfactory.
