The Intellectual Temptation

"...an absorbing (and beautifully written) study that deserves a very
wide audience."
- Joshua Muravchik
"...an erudite account of where [the] vision [of individual liberty] comes
from, why some ideologues set themselves against it, and how our
contemporaries have ceased to treasure it."
- Christopher Caldwell
"Bolkestein exposes today's fashionable, yet dangerous ideas, doing
a great service not only to Europe but indeed to the whole of Western
civilization."
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The dangers of intellectuals and their ideas in politics have rarely been
written about by politicians themselves. This is not surprising, for few
politicians are up to the task. However, Frits Bolkestein is a notable
exception, bringing rare if not unique qualifi cations to this examination.
Not only has he held national and international offi ce in Europe, but he
has also studied, read, taught and published broadly.
The thesis of The Intellectual Temptation is simple but penetrating:
intellectuals' ideas are problematic as political ideas because they are
often neither derived from nor falsifi able by experience. These ideas
are frequently dreams attempting to become reality through power
politics.
There is also a cultural problem. Intellectuals are pack animals, looking
to one another for approval. This affects the quality of their ideas,
as they are susceptible to fashionable ideology and group pressure
- frequently attracted to ideas that are appealing rather than sound.
Very few of them are brave enough to stand against the prevailing
orthodoxy.
Beginning with a history of ideology, Bolkestein traces a nearly 300
year trend of bad ideas making worse politics, sometimes disastrously
so. From his own experience he offers a vision of a politics of prudence,
proper pragmatism and Classicism as a way out of the "intellectual
temptation" that we have fallen under.