Intellectuals Today: Problems in a Changing Society

This book should be taken as a reconnaissance into the intellectual climate of our times. It is, in fact, an attempt to illustrate how the younger generation of British intellectuals fit into the fast-changing society of today and how they see this situation. As such, the book is based on some seventy to eighty conversations and informed interviews during 1965 and 1966 with young intellectuals (defined in Chapter 1). About a third of the interviews were conducted in France and Germany - the purpose was not to delve deeply into French and German culture but to provide a few parallel impressions against which British cultural trends could be more clearly viewed. The comparison that is central to this book, however, is between the intellectual past and present, and to this end the book is divided into three parts: Setting the Scene ~ Conversation Pieces ~ Recurring Themes. [From the Preface]