ABSTRACT
"The intellectual distrusts politicians and politics because these are concerned with partial solutions, with conflict resolution." This chapter provides distinctions between the sources of estrangement which can be found in the nature of society–and especially in its moral defects–and those which spring from the predispositions and certain attributes of intellectuals. The long-range impact of the intellectuals' rejection of their society, their almost instinctive, reflexive disparagement of its major values and their refusal to identify with its established institutions may have another consequence as well. Whatever their historical consequences, dreams of social perfectibility and human liberation are by themselves attractive, and life without them would be impoverished in some intangible way. Being unreservedly anti-utopian is, after all, uncomfortably close to maintaining a prosaic pessimism or corrosive skepticism toward any scheme of far-reaching social improvement. The chapter looks at the various dimensions of estrangement and its relationship to the criticism of society.
