Utopia has been a word which evokes increasing fear in modernity, and yet, it seems unavoidable that some sort of utopian ideal guides our political actions. The revolutions incredibly important in the West for the establishment of liberal democracy would have not occurred were it not for utopian thinking, and at the same time, the definition of utopia signifies a state of affairs completely exempt from critique or improvement. If we are indeed living in a utopia, or at least living in a society which only has left to implement the utopian ideal of liberal democracy more fully, then how can it be said that intellectualism serves any role whatever? This is the fundamental paradox of utopian thinking and modernity, since our core liberal values encourage this sort of critical engagement in human affairs.
In this essay, I will try to understand the relationship between utopia and intellectualism, intellectualism in this case being the thinking which creates, critiques, or changes political ideals. Intellectualism is contrasted with political action, which are those acts which are performed in an effort to implement these ideals. In history, we see an oscillation between these two modes. Periods of intellectual creativity are followed by moments of revolution and action. After this, thinking is stigmatized as dangerous, destabilizing, or a simple waste of time. Drawing heavily on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “gap between past and future,” I will challenge the idea that thinking belongs only to moments of crisis or a pre-revolutionary synthesis of ideas. The established ‘utopia’ in the West, democracy seems to simultaneously entail a solidification as utopia, and a perpetual critique as democracy. Thus, my central claim is that if liberal democracy, or any future system, is to be understood as a utopian ideal at all, it must be one that fundamentally changes the concept of utopia. We can neither deny democracy’s status of utopia and yet consider it the “end of history”, nor can we accept democracy’s status of utopia and yet maintain that critical discourse remains necessary. Rather, it must be accepted that a democratic ‘utopia’ may require continuous, widespread intellectualism as a condition of its survival, and that this fact in itself constitutes utopia. Acting towards a better world should not give way to intellectualizing, but intellectualism is not simply a preliminary stage to be abandoned once action begins. It is a political duty, one that falls not only on the ‘professional’ political thinkers at universities and government buildings, but on democratic citizens.
Utopia, though having many meanings, will be characterized in this essay as an ideal state, a state whose political, social, and economic structures need, in a sense, no further work. For this reason, three important ideas can be deduced. Firstly, the ‘end goal’ of politics is utopia, an ideal which must be continually strived towards and may change from time to time. The second idea is that if utopia is the (perhaps) unattainable ideal which serves as the end of political endeavors, then it serves as a mediator of political ideas. Although we might never establish or live in a utopia, our utopian ideals are what enable us to judge whether this, that, or the other political change is for the better or worse. In other words, our idea of a perfect society guides our value judgements about our current systems and changes happening to them. Thirdly, the fact that utopia is an ideal means that it will differ from person to person, society to society; one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia. This complicates matters slightly, but does not completely make discourse on utopia useless. I am, after all, talking about a political utopia, not a mythical paradise of endless prosperity and no suffering whatsoever.
On my definition here, some may believe our western systems of liberalism, democracy, and free-market capitalism already constitute utopia, and that while there may be incremental, “logistical” changes left to make, the ideal itself has been perfected. This exemplifies the idea of “the end of history”, described by Fukuyama:
“What we may be witnessing […] is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fill the pages of Foreign Affairs’s yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world.” (Fukuyama, 1989, p. 3)
The disparity in opinions on what constitutes utopia is not necessarily proof that such a consensus cannot someday be reached on that ideal. Whether or not this ideal is democracy or something else, the idea that one’s utopia is another’s dystopia is no more an indicator that a shared political utopian ideal is impossible than it is that such an ideal has simply not been dreamt into existence yet. Furthermore, while it is true that such an ideal, if formulated, may not be completely practical does not detract from the idea that such an ideal is at least actionable, or is partially implementable. Democracy, what is considered our ‘current’ utopian ideal in the West, still struggles with implementation details after 250 years of hegemony; it is naive to think any potential future ideals will not be similarly difficult to implement in practice.
This brings me to the primary concern of this piece: the extent to which intellectualism is necessary to establishing some semblance of a utopia, intellectualism being the thinking which formulates a new utopian ideal or ways in which to implement an existing one. Intellectualism in utopia is contrasted with action, or the practical implementation of utopian ideals. To illustrate this, we can think about the intellectualism of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, or, even earlier, John Locke contrasted with the action of the colonists protesting and fighting the British for independence. Similarly, we can think of Rousseau contrasted with the French revolutionaries shortly after. Thinking and action are mutually dependent on each other for such revolutions, as they are for making any utopian-inspired changes to politics at all. The caveat is that they seem to be nearly mutually exclusive at a given time. I think here of the purported words of the judge Jean-Baptiste Coffinhal when being requested by the influential French Chemist, Antoine Lavoisier, a stay of execution to complete his current scientific work: “La république n’a pas besoin de savants et de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu” (The republic has no need for savants and chemists; the course of justice cannot be suspended). Though this quote has appeared in many forms and is likely apocryphal, it describes a very real sentiment present in the minds of revolutionaries and conservatives alike. In the best of times, such as our current American democracy, we see anti-intellectual sentiments and a strong emphasis on practicality and action. This is the same attitude embodied by this anecdote of Lavoisier during the French Revolution, although the former demonstrates a preservation of the status quo, while the latter demonstrates a clearly defined ideal for which the sole focus has become to implement it at all costs, including the postponement of further intellectualism.
This seems to leave thinking to the discrete periods in time in between when the status quo has been deemed unsustainable (i.e. the period leading up to the American and French Revolutions) and the practical implementation of the new ideal. This tentatively makes sense, since the time leading up revolution is the time where utopia is idealized — remember, utopia being, in this case, the end of politics — and the time following the (at least partial) implementation is marked by a sentiment of resolution. After the new utopia is established through revolution, thinking on these matters is stigmatized as it implies that the ideal that was so violently fought for was not as perfect as originally thought. A true utopian ideal requires no further work, and any intellectualism challenging it is simultaneously a threat. This is just as true to post-revolution America and France as it is to the modern-day ‘democratic utopias’ of the West. But, can it be true that there is no space for thinking besides leading up to a revolution?
Hannah Arendt thinks about the place of intellectualism in politics in a preface in which she describes a “gap between past and future”. Writing this work shortly after WWII, it should be no surprise that this “gap between past and future” which she speaks of refers to a space between the past and future which Western tradition had heretofore filled in human experience but, due to current events, was now empty.
“For very long times in our history, actually going throughout the thousands of years that followed upon the foundation of Rome and were determined by Roman concepts, this gap was bridged over by what, since the Romans, we have called tradition.” (Arendt, 1961, p. 285)
Arendt characterizes tradition as a “thread” which was finally broken by the events of the first half of the twentieth century. This context to Arendt’s writing is crucial; she was a firsthand witness to the culmination of Western tradition into totalitarianism and genocide. It was likely clear to her and many others, that this gap could no longer be filled by such tradition, and that something else, something which was not constrained by this tradition, must take its place.
For Arendt, what must fill this gap is thinking, as a potentially better world would not follow from the same tradition which brought about fascism. What was required was a formulation of new political and social ideals, new values, an activity which had not only become necessary, but easier, now that what we may call the “authority of tradition” was no longer trusted. “The gap”, and hence the activity of thinking, is consequently a space of freedom. Arendt illustrates this with a parallel to the French resistance against the Nazi occupation:
“[the French resistance fighters] had been visited for the first time in their lives by an apparition of freedom, not, to be sure, because they acted against tyranny and things worse than tyranny […] but because they had become ‘challengers’, had taken the initiative upon themselves and therefore, without even noticing it, had begun to create that public space between themselves where freedom could appear.” (Arendt, 1961, p. 279)
Here, Arendt implicitly presents the democratic ideal: a public sphere in which thinking fills the gap between past and future, a fearless disregard of tradition when such tradition has proved ineffectual as a basis for the society we strive towards. This seems to show a crucial difference between the democratic revolutions of the West and the type of utopian thinking we do today. The nature of democracy is fundamentally one of incremental change, change that can only be enacted through participation. It does not seem likely that the West (or the entire world) will end up moving away from democracy in a revolutionary manner as it used to implement it. However, utopian thinking is still very much alive; there is an idealization of a better world by conservatives and liberals alike.
If it is true that Western liberal democracy is the utopian ideal which is beyond further critique, then it would follow that there is no new utopian ideal that any amount of intellectualizing could produce. However, there is still the type of intellectualizing necessary to produce methods of implementing this existing ideal more fully. Still, even if one is to agree that no better idea than western liberal democracy exists, it still seems well without our scope of responsibility to continue to consider alternatives. This is a large reason why I struggle to accept the end of history as an idea. Democracy would have never came about without deviance from the status quo, nor will any potential future utopian ideal come about without some degree of deviance. It is simply short-sighted to believe that we, as humans, have fully developed any perfect ideals, that we have fully figured out the ‘secret’ to politics.
And, since we are now at a point in our history where we have the power as “common people” to influence our governments in an attempt to shape our politics closer to our ideals, perhaps this means that, unlike what is intuitively the case, the establishment of democracy generates a new necessity for intellectualism, a burden that is shared by all constituents given the belief that power is granted by the people. The previous pattern of an intellectual idealization of a new utopia followed by a revolutionary implementation seems no longer to be needed to effect meaningful political change, nor does it seem to be the most effective route (though this stands to be determined). Democracy has made us all ‘politicians’, and being a politician (that is, if one hopes to create a better world) is to not just think about how to implement and preserve the status quo, but to consider whether perhaps we can establish new ideals. I think of Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment?”:
“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in a lack of reason but in a lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.” (Kant, 1784, p. 25)
The enlightenment is precisely the type of “thinking” described by Arendt, and is precisely what must fill the gap between past and future if humankind is to make a better world possible. It is notable however that Arendt and Kant seem to be at odds about freedoms role in this enlightenment. Kant claims “that the public should enlighten itself is more possible; indeed, if freedom is granted, enlightenment is almost sure to follow.” (Kant, 1784, p. 26). For him, freedom is somewhat of a precondition for enlightenment, while for Arendt, this enlightenment is what, at least for the French resistance fighters, was needed to “create that public space between themselves where freedom could appear.” (Arendt, 1961, p. 279). I am more inclined to side with Arendt here; freedom was only considered possible after, not before, individuals began to release themselves from their “self-incurred tutelage”.
This release, though, is much easier said than done, the gap is necessarily exerted upon by the forces of past and future. Arendt uses a parable by Franz Kafka to exemplify this. For the purposes of this presentation, I will only quote it partially, though a thorough analysis of the entirety of this short passage warrants its own presentation.
“He has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The second blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants him to push forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. […] His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment […] he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted […] to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other.” (Arendt, 1961, p. 282)
The important takeaway from the use of this parable is the emphasis on human (the “he” of the story) is pushed on from both directions, but that “he” constitutes a break in time, a break which has the potential to alter the forces pushing on “him” from each side. “The insertion of man, as he breaks up the continuum, cannot but cause the forces to deflect, however lightly, from their original direction” (Arendt, 1961, p. 284).
Thus, it seems as if the “goal” of thought here is to become “timeless” in the sense that we are no longer in the breaking the continuum of past and future, situating ourselves in the gap in such a way where we hold “the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other” (Arendt, 1961, p. 282). In other words, using our own faculty of reason without aiding the past (“tradition”) in its fight against the future (“the wave of the future”) and vice versa. This is only possible by filling the gap with thinking, rather than being situated between the two “antagonists”.
I will now circle back to my bigger question about the role of “intellectuals” in utopia with a question asked by Antonio Gramsci: “Are intellectuals an autonomous and independent social group, or does every social group have its own particular specialized category of intellectuals?” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 184). Gramsci thus distinguishes between “traditional” (the common notion) and “organic” intellectuals respectively. Is he right in this distinction? Even if it is true that every group is partially constituted by its own group of intellectuals, then it is still the case that the rest of the group fills the gap with tradition. If we agree with Arendt, we must all, as democratic constituents, become “organic” intellectuals if we are to fill the gap with thinking. Only this will end our perpetual battle with the past and future and build a better world from beyond their respective constraints.
This leaves us with a paradoxical concept of utopia, or more precisely, the end of politics. Although a utopia would constitute a “finished” project, one which is immune to any questioning or critique, we simultaneously have developed a utopian ideal in the West which considers anything of this nature to be the exact opposite of utopia. We cannot imagine that a perfect political system would suppress any and all discourse which purposes to critique it. And yet, this is precisely the paradox of the “end of history” and the role of intellectuals in a better world. It is apparent that after developing an ideal, we must turn to strictly acting to implement it and that as we do this, we must accept the ideal we have adopted unconditionally:
“A feasible utopian world must presuppose that people have lost their creativity and freedom, that the variety of human life forms and thus the personal life have been destroyed, and that all of mankind has achieved the perfect satisfaction of needs and accepted a perpetual deadly stagnation as its normal condition. Such a world would mark the end of the human race as we know it and as we define it. Stagnation is an inescapable condition of the utopian happiness;” (Kolakowski, 1983, p. 238)
However, if this were the case, democracy would have never existed, and in our current world, we would no longer be thinking about anything other than practical implementation details. This second idea directly contradicts the spirit of democracy to the extent that either democracy is indeed not the “end of history”, or that democracy has fundamentally changed what it means to think about a better world. Instead of the former conception of a perfect political system as a needing no critique, democracy has possibly established that a perfect political system is one of constant, rigorous, and widespread intellectualism: a perpetually unfinished product. If western liberal democracy is indeed the end of history, perhaps the realization of this end required the overdue realization that any system accepted uncritically is inevitably disastrous.
Works Cited
Fukuyama, F. (1989). The End of History? The National Interest, 16, 3–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184
Arendt, Hannah. (1996). Preface to Between Past and Future. In: Richard Kearney & Mara Rainwater (Eds.). The Continental Philosophy Reader (278-285). New York: Routledge. (1961)
Kant, Immanuel. (2017). What is Enlightenment? In: Richard Schacht (Ed.). The Norton Anthology of Western Philosophy (Vol. 1, pp. 25-30). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. (1784)
Gramsci, Antonio. (1996). The Formation of the Intellectuals. In: Richard Kearney & Mara Rainwater (Eds.). The Continental Philosophy Reader (184-193). New York: Routledge. (1971)
Kolakowski, Leszek. (1983). The Death of Utopia Reconsidered. In: Sterling M. McMurrin (Eds.). The Tanner Lectures on Human Value (Vol. 4, 227-247). Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.