The Intellectual Temptation [antikvár]

'refaceWhen I completed my graduate smdies in 1959 the Cold War was in full swing. Obser\ing the relation between ideas and politics, I thought of writing a diesis on "the anti-democratic intellectual". Instead I went to Mombasa to sell oil, which was probably a good choice.Nevertheless, the subject stayed with me and it broadened into "intellectuals and politics". Not the influence of intellectuals upon other inteUecmals, for that is the history of ideas. Instead, what began to interest me was the influence of inteUecmals upon actual poU-rics politics at street level, as it were. In particular, I became concerned with two defining event of the twentieth cenmry: first the rise and fall of totalitarian dictatorship and, later, the gestation of the European Union. That is what this book is about. I have spent most of my career in dealing with practical affairs. It is only since I resigned from the European Commission in November 2004 that I have found time to study the matter at hand.This book concerns contemporary politics. But to understand how we got here, I have also looked back into the history of modern Europe to a number of formative episodes.It consists of four parts. The first three parts are concerned with the eighteenth, the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The fourth part deals with six subjects of current importance: the European Union, development aid, multiculturaUsm, intellectuals and capitalism, the proper role of government and, lasdy, cultural masochism and the "Liberal Death Wish". It is my intention here to share the defense and endorsement of the central principles of Modernity against a variety of forms of irrationalism, such as Romanticism, postmodernism, vitalism and religious fiindamentaKsm.In writing this book I have benefited gready from discussions I have had with a number of persons who were interested in what I was doing. I must thank them profusely. They are Arend-Jan Boekes-tijn, Diederik Boomsma, Maarten Brands, Christopher Caldwell, Paul Chteur, Derk-Jan Eppink, Paul Everard, Meindert Fennema, John Gillingham, Caroline van der Graaf, Arnold Heumakers, Ayaan Hir-si Ali, jeroen van Hoven, Andreas Kinneging, Hans Kribbe, Hans