The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century

Intellectuals, virtually by definition, are expected to think for themselves. But the spectacle of intellectuals subordinating their independence of mind to dogmatic ideologies, whether left or right, is dismayingly common in the 20th century. The French call it la trahison des clercs. In The Burden of Responsibility, Tony Judt discusses three inspiring French intellectuals--Leon Blum, Albert Camus, and Raymond Aron--who courageously lived up to their political, moral, and intellectual responsibilities. Their courage, Judt notes, is all the more impressive since they were all outsiders: Blum and Aron were Jews, while Camus was reared and educated in Algeria, far from the training grounds of the French intelligentsia.

The longest, and arguably most exciting, chapter is devoted to Blum, whose efforts against extremists on the Left and the Right are truly remarkable. As the moral center of the Socialist Party, Blum was instrumental in keeping it independent of Moscow. When France fell in 1940, the Vichy government put him on trial, but he defended himself so adroitly that the German authorities, fearing embarrassment, ended the proceedings abruptly; subsequently, Blum survived two years in Buchenwald and Dachau, serving briefly as prime minister after the war. The chapter on Camus is, understandably, less dramatic, even despite his work in the Resistance; the chapter on Aron, best known for his work on the philosophy of history, is positively anticlimactic. Nevertheless, Judt's juxtaposition of these three intellectuals provides enlightenment not only about modern French history but also about the role of the responsible intellectual in society. --Glenn Branch