BRAINS

The poll of the world's leading public intellectuals, organised by the editors of Prospect and Foreign Policy, should generate plenty of debate. I'd have preferred to see the arch-contrarian Thomas Sowell get the nod ahead of Henry Louis Gates, but so long as Eric Hobsbawm doesn't come anywhere near the top of the readers' choices, I won't have any complaints.

UPDATE: Oliver Kamm feels much the same way:

Hobsbawm has rarely missed an opportunity even after communism’s demise to obfuscate its record...

Comments

[j. dyer]

I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my favorite contemporary thinkers, Alain Finkielkraut, to be on the list at all.

[j. dyer]

For those unfamiliar with Finkielkraut's thought here is a very brief summary of his forthcoming book in French:

http://www.signandsight.com/

Le point, 15.09.2005 (France)

French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has taught the history of thought at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris for twenty-seven years. Now he has published a volume with four series of lectures entitled "Nous autres, modernes" (Editions Ellipses). The magazine publishes excerpts from two of them, on the "Use of the World", and the question "Why schools should be conservative", dealing above all with the thinking of Hannah Arendt. "In her entire work, Hannah Arendt always insisted on the connection between the integration of the new and the preservation of the world. The schools, to the extent that they teach autonomy, seem to her to be the most holy element in this fragile alliance. 'Schools must be conservative in order to preserve the new and the revolutionary in every child.' Emancipation is not possible if you simply ride the course of time, but only by taking the detour through the overarching sign of humanity, which can be read in the works of culture. As the masters of the Renaissance said, in Cicero's school you learn how to be yourself, not Cicero."

[Clive]

Thanks. I must add Sign & Sight to the media links. I used to have it on my old blog.