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Саме його урокам, втратам, подіям і персоналіям присвячено цю книжку. У ній вміщено есеї, які історик та інтелектуал Тоні Джадт писав упродовж дванадцяти років. Ці праці охоплюють доволі широке коло питань � від французьких марксистів до американської зовнішньої політики, від глобалізаційної економіки до пам’ят� про зло. А ще вони мають досить широку географію � від Бельгії до Ізраїлю.
Автор уміло переплітає історичні факти, підсвічує теми, які часто лишалися в тіні, під пилом збайдужіння чи тиском архівів. Він заохочує читачів поглибити розуміння історії, переосмислити її, щоб без викривлень сприймати минуле й теперішнє.
Саме його урокам, втратам, подіям і персоналіям присвячено цю книжку. У ній вміщено есеї, які історик та інтелектуал Тоні Джадт писав упродовж дванадцяти років. Ці праці охоплюють доволі широке коло питань � від французьких марксистів до американської зовнішньої політики, від глобалізаційної економіки до пам’ят� про зло. А ще вони мають досить широку географію � від Бельгії до Ізраїлю.
Автор уміло переплітає історичні факти, підсвічує теми, які часто лишалися в тіні, під пилом збайдужіння чи тиском архівів. Він заохочує читачів поглибити розуміння історії, переосмислити її, щоб без викривлень сприймати минуле й теперішнє.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Tony Judt
46books631followersBorn in 1948, Tony Judt was raised in the East End of London by a mother whose parents had immigrated from Russia and a Belgian father who descended from a line of Lithuanian rabbis. Judt was educated at Emanuel School, before receiving a BA (1969) and PhD (1972) in history from the University of Cambridge.
Like many other Jewish parents living in postwar Europe, his mother and father were secular, but they sent him to Hebrew school and steeped him in the Yiddish culture of his grandparents, which Judt says he still thinks of wistfully. Urged on by his parents, Judt enthusiastically waded into the world of Israeli politics at age 15. He helped promote the migration of British Jews to Israel. In 1966, having won an exhibition to King's College Cambridge, he took a gap year and went to work on kibbutz Machanaim. When Nasser expelled UN troops from Sinai in 1967, and Israel mobilized for war, like many European Jews, he volunteered to replace kibbutz members who had been called up. During and in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, he worked as a driver and translator for the Israel Defense Forces.
But during the aftermath of the war, Judt's belief in the Zionist enterprise began to unravel. "I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist, communitarian country through work," Judt has said. The problem, he began to believe, was that this view was "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible."
Career: King's College, Cambridge, England, fellow, 1972-78; University of California at Berkeley, assistant professor, 1978-80; St. Anne's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, fellow, 1980-87; New York University, New York, NY, professor of history, 1987--, director of Remarque Institute, 1995--.
Awards: American Council of Learned Societies, fellow, 1980; British Academy Award for Research, 1984; Nuffield Foundation fellow, 1986; Guggenheim fellow, 1989; Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction finalist, 2006, for Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945.
Like many other Jewish parents living in postwar Europe, his mother and father were secular, but they sent him to Hebrew school and steeped him in the Yiddish culture of his grandparents, which Judt says he still thinks of wistfully. Urged on by his parents, Judt enthusiastically waded into the world of Israeli politics at age 15. He helped promote the migration of British Jews to Israel. In 1966, having won an exhibition to King's College Cambridge, he took a gap year and went to work on kibbutz Machanaim. When Nasser expelled UN troops from Sinai in 1967, and Israel mobilized for war, like many European Jews, he volunteered to replace kibbutz members who had been called up. During and in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, he worked as a driver and translator for the Israel Defense Forces.
But during the aftermath of the war, Judt's belief in the Zionist enterprise began to unravel. "I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist, communitarian country through work," Judt has said. The problem, he began to believe, was that this view was "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible."
Career: King's College, Cambridge, England, fellow, 1972-78; University of California at Berkeley, assistant professor, 1978-80; St. Anne's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, fellow, 1980-87; New York University, New York, NY, professor of history, 1987--, director of Remarque Institute, 1995--.
Awards: American Council of Learned Societies, fellow, 1980; British Academy Award for Research, 1984; Nuffield Foundation fellow, 1986; Guggenheim fellow, 1989; Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction finalist, 2006, for Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 reviews
August 13, 2012
It's hard to know how to review this without merely stringing together a series of superlatives. So maybe I should do just that: trenchant, clear-sighted, stunning, dazzling, lucid, elegant, incisive, sharp. Indeed positively acerbic sometimes, especially on the subject of Tony Blair. Each country gets the politicians it deserves I fear.
The quality weekly German newspaper Die Zeit used to publish Judt's articles: in the most recent edition there was an interview with Mr Blair, who trotted out conventional banalities on the European crisis (while blathering about how he was saying this in all humility). I do hope this is a one-off and not an indication of a general tendency in one of the last bastions of quality journalism. Judt had the ability to see beyond political posturing and recognize deeper currents below the surface, and to express his concerns in limpid, graceful prose. A marvel.
The quality weekly German newspaper Die Zeit used to publish Judt's articles: in the most recent edition there was an interview with Mr Blair, who trotted out conventional banalities on the European crisis (while blathering about how he was saying this in all humility). I do hope this is a one-off and not an indication of a general tendency in one of the last bastions of quality journalism. Judt had the ability to see beyond political posturing and recognize deeper currents below the surface, and to express his concerns in limpid, graceful prose. A marvel.
August 23, 2010
It's not often that I will read a collection of essays straight through from start to finish - but Reappraisals has that powerful combination of compelling readability and easy erudition that effortlessly pulls the reader along from one entry to the next. Judiciously assembled from book reviews and essays that were published between 1994 and 2006 - primarily in The New York Review of Books and The New Republic - the twenty-four pieces that make up Reappraisals loosely share a common theme: that the process of forgetting the grim-but-pertinent lessons painfully learned in the twentieth century has been accelerated in these early years of the twenty-first. The dangers of wealth disparity and social injustice, of the allure of driving fervidly towards an illusory ideological utopia, which wreaked such ruinous havoc when unleashed mere generations ago, are blossoming into their technicolor fullness even as the barriers erected out of the stark memories of Total War and The Camps are rapidly dimming into the pallid black-and-white of prewar cinema, soon to seize-up fully and melt away. Judt's essays revisit important figures and events that were pivotal in forming our (diminishing) understanding of the horrors that were reaped from the (ofttimes banal) evils that were sown.
Of extra pleasure for myself was the fact that almost the entirety of intellectuals and writers whom Judt examines - Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hobsbawm, Leszek Kołakowski, Edward Said, Whittaker Chambers - are figures whom I have both read and/or harbored an abiding fascination for. Judt's deep knowledge of his various subject's life and works shines; and he seldom refrains from criticizing even those he most admires. Eric Hobsbawm, a brilliant and stylistically delightful Marxist historian - whose /// tetralogy are amongst the finest histories I have read - is taken to task for his refusal to truly acknowledge the savagery inflicted upon the Soviet Union and its communist satellites by Stalin and his successors. An otherwise admiring summation of the British Historian's life is concluded by Judt's blunt assessment of Hobsbawm's eye-shielding folly:
The values and institutions that have mattered to the Left - from equality before the law to the provision of public services as a matter of right - and that are now under assault - owed nothing to Communism. Seventy years of "real existing Socialism" contributed nothing to the sum of human welfare. Nothing.
It is characteristic of Judt - as of his democratic socialist forebears and heroes Aron, Camus, and Koestler - to refuse to avoid facing up to the Left's massive failures in the previous century. In furtherance of this attitude he provides a truly fantastic essay-review of Kołakowski's which closes with a reminder that the emminent Pole's philosophical subject, with its potent blend of Promethean romantic illusion and historical determinism, may yet be resurrected from the ashes to serve as a theoretical frame from which to drape future eschatological dreams.
The second half of the book examines Reappraisals' theme from the perspective of Europe - essays on the fall of France in the Second World War and its enduring search of lost time, Tony Blair (hostile would be describing Judt's tone lightly), Belgium and Romania - and the Middle East via two penetrating and highly critical pieces on Israel. The first of the latter two, a review of Michael Oren's , essentially abandons its efforts at reviewing Oren's work in order to allow Judt to boldly put forth his understanding of how the war played out, and its still resonating repercussions for Israel and the Middle East; the second is a withering critique of Israel for its stunted maturity as it was (then) celebrating its 58th birthday as a modern state.
Reappraisals concludes with a series of essays about the United States and select US citizens: Chambers; Henry Kissinger; Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis; a harshly antagonistic review of John Lewis Gaddis' ; and On The Strange Death of Liberal America, wherein Judt ponders the damning uniformity of the majority of Liberal perches in the days running up to, and during, the Iraq War, sifting through the initial hawkish enthusiasm and subsequent feeble excuse-making to discover why they performed so badly, and observing that they essentially differed from the neocons who mongered the war only in finding the neoconservative position distasteful to have to promote. This is Judt at his most excoriating, unwilling to countenance a refusal to go against the grain of an inflamed nationalist unity by those voices that actually mattered. He reiterates that the liberal position has always been one of questioning the conventional wisdom, of refusing pat answers - that the liberal intellectual should always be disturbing the peace - especially his own. That Judt's has sometimes been the lone voice ringing forth on certain positions - often concerning Israel, especially back in the frothy, frenzied years after September 11th - shows how much he takes this credo to heart.
The penultimate piece is an intriguing comparison of the two different paths that the European Union and the United States were embarked upon at mid-decade in our new century; the final entry - The Social Question Redivivus - an immensely thoughtful, insightful, and sobering examination of the state of the Left and its future prospects (not good) in the final gasps of the twentieth century. Judt clearly lays out his vision of how globalization would proceed, the failures of the Left to deal with it, and the new goals and political means that would be necessary for the Left to offer a compelling reason for the populace to trust its solutions over those of the free market. Having saved the best for last, Judt concludes the book with a caution: As the great reformers of the nineteenth century well knew, the Social Question, if left unaddressed, does not just go away. It goes instead in search of more radical answers.
You certainly do not have to agree with all that Judt says - I don't - to justify reading this book. The writing itself is superb, the thought deep and precise, the expressions clear, the subjects fascinating, the humanity warm. Judt unapologetically endorsed a Left Democratic Socialism as the best political method for ensuring justice and equality, but faced the truth of his side's many failures and shortcomings without flinching or making excuses. The final lines of his essay on Edward Said read His death opens a yawning void in American public life. He is irreplaceable. The exact same expression makes a fitting epitaph for the recently deceased Tony Judt.
Of extra pleasure for myself was the fact that almost the entirety of intellectuals and writers whom Judt examines - Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hobsbawm, Leszek Kołakowski, Edward Said, Whittaker Chambers - are figures whom I have both read and/or harbored an abiding fascination for. Judt's deep knowledge of his various subject's life and works shines; and he seldom refrains from criticizing even those he most admires. Eric Hobsbawm, a brilliant and stylistically delightful Marxist historian - whose /// tetralogy are amongst the finest histories I have read - is taken to task for his refusal to truly acknowledge the savagery inflicted upon the Soviet Union and its communist satellites by Stalin and his successors. An otherwise admiring summation of the British Historian's life is concluded by Judt's blunt assessment of Hobsbawm's eye-shielding folly:
The values and institutions that have mattered to the Left - from equality before the law to the provision of public services as a matter of right - and that are now under assault - owed nothing to Communism. Seventy years of "real existing Socialism" contributed nothing to the sum of human welfare. Nothing.
It is characteristic of Judt - as of his democratic socialist forebears and heroes Aron, Camus, and Koestler - to refuse to avoid facing up to the Left's massive failures in the previous century. In furtherance of this attitude he provides a truly fantastic essay-review of Kołakowski's which closes with a reminder that the emminent Pole's philosophical subject, with its potent blend of Promethean romantic illusion and historical determinism, may yet be resurrected from the ashes to serve as a theoretical frame from which to drape future eschatological dreams.
The second half of the book examines Reappraisals' theme from the perspective of Europe - essays on the fall of France in the Second World War and its enduring search of lost time, Tony Blair (hostile would be describing Judt's tone lightly), Belgium and Romania - and the Middle East via two penetrating and highly critical pieces on Israel. The first of the latter two, a review of Michael Oren's , essentially abandons its efforts at reviewing Oren's work in order to allow Judt to boldly put forth his understanding of how the war played out, and its still resonating repercussions for Israel and the Middle East; the second is a withering critique of Israel for its stunted maturity as it was (then) celebrating its 58th birthday as a modern state.
Reappraisals concludes with a series of essays about the United States and select US citizens: Chambers; Henry Kissinger; Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis; a harshly antagonistic review of John Lewis Gaddis' ; and On The Strange Death of Liberal America, wherein Judt ponders the damning uniformity of the majority of Liberal perches in the days running up to, and during, the Iraq War, sifting through the initial hawkish enthusiasm and subsequent feeble excuse-making to discover why they performed so badly, and observing that they essentially differed from the neocons who mongered the war only in finding the neoconservative position distasteful to have to promote. This is Judt at his most excoriating, unwilling to countenance a refusal to go against the grain of an inflamed nationalist unity by those voices that actually mattered. He reiterates that the liberal position has always been one of questioning the conventional wisdom, of refusing pat answers - that the liberal intellectual should always be disturbing the peace - especially his own. That Judt's has sometimes been the lone voice ringing forth on certain positions - often concerning Israel, especially back in the frothy, frenzied years after September 11th - shows how much he takes this credo to heart.
The penultimate piece is an intriguing comparison of the two different paths that the European Union and the United States were embarked upon at mid-decade in our new century; the final entry - The Social Question Redivivus - an immensely thoughtful, insightful, and sobering examination of the state of the Left and its future prospects (not good) in the final gasps of the twentieth century. Judt clearly lays out his vision of how globalization would proceed, the failures of the Left to deal with it, and the new goals and political means that would be necessary for the Left to offer a compelling reason for the populace to trust its solutions over those of the free market. Having saved the best for last, Judt concludes the book with a caution: As the great reformers of the nineteenth century well knew, the Social Question, if left unaddressed, does not just go away. It goes instead in search of more radical answers.
You certainly do not have to agree with all that Judt says - I don't - to justify reading this book. The writing itself is superb, the thought deep and precise, the expressions clear, the subjects fascinating, the humanity warm. Judt unapologetically endorsed a Left Democratic Socialism as the best political method for ensuring justice and equality, but faced the truth of his side's many failures and shortcomings without flinching or making excuses. The final lines of his essay on Edward Said read His death opens a yawning void in American public life. He is irreplaceable. The exact same expression makes a fitting epitaph for the recently deceased Tony Judt.
January 8, 2011
I have long been an admirer of the recently deceased Tony Judt, an intellectually clear-sighted and courageous thinker who faced his own death with dignity and with the same integrity that he applied to his work.
I say thinker but he was more of an analyst and recorder, an historian whose political philosophy, a sort of revisionist social democracy, was probably out of time and out of place - but this should not be held against him.
This book is not much more than a collection of articles, already published essays and book reviews that act as an extended appendix to his history of the post war era (‘Postwar�). It is not a narrative but a collection of ruminations on a number of themes from the mid-1990s through to 2007.
Like the work of many ‘public intellectuals�, some of his contemporary writing on contemporary issues is already dated after the passage of only a few years. His understanding of the past is superior to most but his understanding of the future no better than yours or mine.
Even historians seem to forget how fast things change. The world before the credit crunch already looks an age away. He is also on less sure ground in writing about international relations. One or two of his political essays (on Europe and a new social democracy) seem to me to be naïve.
But he is on much surer ground when writing about intellectual history and, since this subject makes up the vast bulk of the book, it is a must-read for anyone interested in modern European history.
The book is divided into four sections with an ‘envelope� of thoughts, a little unpersuasive perhaps but sincere enough, about the sort of civilized political discourse this best of liberal intellectuals would like to see.
It is also important to understand that he is a European (indeed, a British) Jew writing mostly in America for an American audience. His work is important, for this reason, in explaining the role of Jews in the ‘European Civil War� of 1914 to 1945 as is his sharp critique of Israel as a permanent adolescent with an ill-informed moral sense.
He is courageous because he writes as someone who is engaged with his own Jewishness yet prepared to stand up to those intellectual thugs who think that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic and who dismiss any complaint from within their own kind as the language of the ‘self-hating Jew�. I criticize my own degenerate British political culture but I am definitely not a self-hating Briton!
The first section looks at four intellectuals of the interwar and post war period (Koestler, Levi, Sperber and Arendt) and uses them as exemplars of the confusions of that time. He does not hide that right-wing revolt against communism was defensive and that the offensive role of communism was often led by Jews. Bela Kun’s regime gave every reason to fear Bolshevism as not merely expropriatory but murderous and Judt is not a great fan of communism’s intellectual claims or actions.
This role of some Jews does not justify later crimes against humanity but it properly places the Jewish intellectual of a certain cast of mind in pole position as problematic initiator of a process that led to the deaths of many innocents amongst poor and middle classes alike, noth Jewish and non-Jewish.
He looks at responses over time to the evils of fascism, communism and colonialism by a number of intellectuals and at the problematic business of defining evil itself. He explores the switch of the public intellectual from embracing tyranny to opposing it with such fervor that the dislike was to be no more rational than the love.
Later in the book, he undertakes a devastating criticism of the latest turn of the liberal intellectual in America and on the European Right towards an almost neurotic and largely ignorant obsession with Islamo-Fascism. And he is no automatic admirer of every anti-Soviet dissident � he is too sophisticated for that.
One cannot help, as the evidence mounts, but consider the allegedly rational intellectual to be the most irrational and simple-minded of creatures, strutting for attention, and, though the type is by no means exclusively Jewish (on the contrary), it is reasonable to point out the role of the Jewish Enlightenment rationalist in the fads and fashions of murderous belief (and as provocateur of murderous belief).
This is not anti-semitism but observation. I only wish that Judt spent more time on the ‘other side� � the alleged ‘irrationalism� of such equally dangerous intellectual types as Junger, Eliade and Evola.
Indeed, the vast mass of Jewish people were victims of a cultural war in which their own intelligentsiya were complicit both sides of the Pripet Marshes and eventually in Zion itself.
It is not Jewishness that is the issue in this book but the excessive de-humanising rationalism, the universalizing tendencies of the disassociated neurotic, that is to be found today amongst all universalists of the West and the so-called Radical Centre today and which was once found in Marxism.
Modern anti-Islamists think structurally like Marxists just as many Islamists think structurally like fascists � plus ca change �.
The second part takes some of the themes of the first but looks at a broader spread of intellectuals to build a picture of European thought as essentially religious in nature, a search for meaning.
He looks at Camus, clearly a hero to Judt but one who cannot escape from the religion of France, at Althusser, the monstrous epitome of unnecessary cultural pessimism, and at Hobsbawn, whose need to belief in the absurdity that is communism infects the official Left to this day and helps define for us the type of the ‘useful idiot�.
He writes of Kolakowski, who swapped one religion for another but who certainly exposed the logic of Marxist thought in a way that leaves no hiding place for Marxists, of Pope Paul II, who must be taken seriously (in my opinion as a dangerous and retrogressive figure) in any history of the modern West, and Edward Said, a rootless cosmopolitan who was to the Arab world what Judt was to the Jewish world, a stripper-away of illusions.
Said was right about the need ultimately for a one state solution to the problem of Israel-Palestine but there are too many vested interests for his sensible view to prevail.
From here (in Part Three) Judt goes on to take a look at aspects of French, British, Belgian, Romanian and Israeli politics.
His excoriations of Israel say all that needs to be said on the matter, he writes well on the French struggle for meaning as a nation and he is suitably unimpressed with the utter nonsense of Blairism, for which Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the Emperor with no clothes might have been written. One hopes a veil may eventually be drawn over his (mal-)administration.
The two most interesting essays are on Belgium and Romania, countries scarcely considered in the Anglo-Saxon world except as problems. Both act as exemplars of fundamental problems underpinning a European Project now under immense strain as a result of the ‘credit crunch�.
Belgium, a non country like the African post-imperial states, is divided into ethnic North and South as much as the Ivory Coast. It remains a puzzle how it has held together for so long.
Romania (GDP was below Namibia’s in 1998) is poorer than some African countries and is a notorious political basket case in its own right. If a politician can be classed as truly evil, then Ceaucescu is definitely in the running.
Judt opens up to scrutiny just what the Eurocrats are taking on in trying to absorb the problems of such countries and about which they are in denial.
Belgium stands for the potential breakdown of Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom under economic pressure and the resentments that might be caused if German economic dominance turns East-Central Europe into a dominion in all but name.
Romania stands for the massive funding required to bring it and the Balkans into ‘civilisation� at a time when Greece, Ireland, Portugal and parts of the UK, Spain and Italy threaten to go backwards (though Judt was not to know how bad things would get in the years after 2007).
The fourth section on America is less self-assured. There is a typically courageous defence of Whittaker Chambers against the Leftist and liberal true believers who would undertake any twist rather than accept that the Soviet Union was involved in offensive espionage and that Alger Hiss might have been guilty as hell.
There is an unpersuasive critique of Kissinger. He does a suitable knife job on Gaddis� history of the Cold War � one of a series of triumphalist accounts of imperial victory that appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in the last decade and whose main purpose seems to have been to make the Anglo-Saxon Establishment feel good about itself.
His review of the Cuban Crisis reminds us (again, thinking of the current fiasco in the Ivory Coast) that elected politicians are generally going to be smarter than their opponents and the bureaucrats who surround them.
Major wars can start because one side misunderstands the other side’s priorities. Two different essays suggests that we should feel very lucky that Cold War Berlin (this time innocently) did not thrust us into a catastrophic war for the third time in a century � psycho-geographers must have a field day wondering what dark emanation makes that imperial city into the vortex of such actual and nearly missed horror: a lesson perhaps for our Euro-federalists.
All in all, excellent essays in a book that can be dipped in and out of to profit by anyone who wants to understand the world we live in today. Above all, it offers real insights into the puffed up and rather silly world of the officially sanctioned public intellectual. How they must have hated Judt because he was supposed to be one of their own.
Instead, as a humane and liberal Jew, he pointed out the foolishnesses of his own class whilst wholly respecting the importance of reasoned engagement with the issues of the day. He certainly saw through the nonsense perpetrated by Tony Blair, the new Radical Centre (which he persists in calling ‘liberal�) and Israel.
The book is by no means a polemic. Perhaps two or three essays out of 24 or so slip into this category and are a bit tiresome for that reason. The vast majority are thoughtful, very well researched, reasonable and instructive.
Above all, he is humane � on this, read his moving essays on Primo Levi, whose subtle response to the Shoah confused and irritated those determined to ‘take positions� and on Sperber, another ‘survivor�, who gives cause for Judt to explore what the shock of the Holocaust, its breaking of all the rules, meant to this generation of intellectuals.
Indeed, if there is a hidden theme in the book, it is that ‘taking positions� without independent thought on the facts is precisely the death of intellectual endeavour.
What Judt does, especially in the essays on prominent Jewish European intellectuals, is point out something forgotten entirely by their intellectually primitive Zionist and Neo-Conservative heirs in New York � that the European Jewish experience was massively complex and truly cosmopolitan.
Part of the shock of the Shoah was that the assault on many of them was by their own kind. It was Germans and Hungarians murdering Germans and Hungarians in their eyes and the Jewish aspects of the assault only hit home as it was happening and afterwards. Zionism is a very comprehensible response to the shock but it was never inevitable that Jews would all be obliged to be Zionists until that point.
I have left to last the key theme of much of the book � remembrance. Not in the sense of the ‘holocaust industry� or memorialisation as fixed ritual but the constant attempt to think through the meaning of past events and relate them to the past. This is what history really is, not simple narratives that are designed to allow us to take this or that 'position�.
Thus, the holocaust is placed in its context of Bela Kun and Israel is not understood properly until it comes to terms with the fact of the Nakba and does not think that the Holocaust trumps what Israel did to the Arabs in some ridiculous Benthamite calculation.
Critical engagement with history, based on a humane understanding of personal responses and meanings, their purposes and their vulnerabilities, also means the ability to question narratives such as the determined obsession of many Americans to treat every challenge as if it was Munich. Iran stupidly becomes seen as Nazi Germany when it is nothing of the kind.
Those who saw Cuba as Munich in Kennedy’s circle were the ones who would have driven us into genocidal holocaust in the early 1960s. If you really want to be scared, read about the mind-set of the military loons in the President’s counsels. Dr Strangelove was creepily close to the truth of the matter.
As Judt says, even today, “the United States today is the only advanced country that still glorifies and exalts the military, a sentiment familiar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown today.�
With ideological rigidity on the one side and bureaucrats without humane sense on the other as permanent features of global politics, and developed to a fine art of ignorance in modern America, it is no surprise to see Guantanamo, the panic over Wikileaks, drone murder of civilians, the demands over extradition and access to private data overseas, constant small-scale war and the brutalisation and torture of an unfortunate little man called Bradley Manning.
If only Tony Judt were alive to chronicle it all �
I say thinker but he was more of an analyst and recorder, an historian whose political philosophy, a sort of revisionist social democracy, was probably out of time and out of place - but this should not be held against him.
This book is not much more than a collection of articles, already published essays and book reviews that act as an extended appendix to his history of the post war era (‘Postwar�). It is not a narrative but a collection of ruminations on a number of themes from the mid-1990s through to 2007.
Like the work of many ‘public intellectuals�, some of his contemporary writing on contemporary issues is already dated after the passage of only a few years. His understanding of the past is superior to most but his understanding of the future no better than yours or mine.
Even historians seem to forget how fast things change. The world before the credit crunch already looks an age away. He is also on less sure ground in writing about international relations. One or two of his political essays (on Europe and a new social democracy) seem to me to be naïve.
But he is on much surer ground when writing about intellectual history and, since this subject makes up the vast bulk of the book, it is a must-read for anyone interested in modern European history.
The book is divided into four sections with an ‘envelope� of thoughts, a little unpersuasive perhaps but sincere enough, about the sort of civilized political discourse this best of liberal intellectuals would like to see.
It is also important to understand that he is a European (indeed, a British) Jew writing mostly in America for an American audience. His work is important, for this reason, in explaining the role of Jews in the ‘European Civil War� of 1914 to 1945 as is his sharp critique of Israel as a permanent adolescent with an ill-informed moral sense.
He is courageous because he writes as someone who is engaged with his own Jewishness yet prepared to stand up to those intellectual thugs who think that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic and who dismiss any complaint from within their own kind as the language of the ‘self-hating Jew�. I criticize my own degenerate British political culture but I am definitely not a self-hating Briton!
The first section looks at four intellectuals of the interwar and post war period (Koestler, Levi, Sperber and Arendt) and uses them as exemplars of the confusions of that time. He does not hide that right-wing revolt against communism was defensive and that the offensive role of communism was often led by Jews. Bela Kun’s regime gave every reason to fear Bolshevism as not merely expropriatory but murderous and Judt is not a great fan of communism’s intellectual claims or actions.
This role of some Jews does not justify later crimes against humanity but it properly places the Jewish intellectual of a certain cast of mind in pole position as problematic initiator of a process that led to the deaths of many innocents amongst poor and middle classes alike, noth Jewish and non-Jewish.
He looks at responses over time to the evils of fascism, communism and colonialism by a number of intellectuals and at the problematic business of defining evil itself. He explores the switch of the public intellectual from embracing tyranny to opposing it with such fervor that the dislike was to be no more rational than the love.
Later in the book, he undertakes a devastating criticism of the latest turn of the liberal intellectual in America and on the European Right towards an almost neurotic and largely ignorant obsession with Islamo-Fascism. And he is no automatic admirer of every anti-Soviet dissident � he is too sophisticated for that.
One cannot help, as the evidence mounts, but consider the allegedly rational intellectual to be the most irrational and simple-minded of creatures, strutting for attention, and, though the type is by no means exclusively Jewish (on the contrary), it is reasonable to point out the role of the Jewish Enlightenment rationalist in the fads and fashions of murderous belief (and as provocateur of murderous belief).
This is not anti-semitism but observation. I only wish that Judt spent more time on the ‘other side� � the alleged ‘irrationalism� of such equally dangerous intellectual types as Junger, Eliade and Evola.
Indeed, the vast mass of Jewish people were victims of a cultural war in which their own intelligentsiya were complicit both sides of the Pripet Marshes and eventually in Zion itself.
It is not Jewishness that is the issue in this book but the excessive de-humanising rationalism, the universalizing tendencies of the disassociated neurotic, that is to be found today amongst all universalists of the West and the so-called Radical Centre today and which was once found in Marxism.
Modern anti-Islamists think structurally like Marxists just as many Islamists think structurally like fascists � plus ca change �.
The second part takes some of the themes of the first but looks at a broader spread of intellectuals to build a picture of European thought as essentially religious in nature, a search for meaning.
He looks at Camus, clearly a hero to Judt but one who cannot escape from the religion of France, at Althusser, the monstrous epitome of unnecessary cultural pessimism, and at Hobsbawn, whose need to belief in the absurdity that is communism infects the official Left to this day and helps define for us the type of the ‘useful idiot�.
He writes of Kolakowski, who swapped one religion for another but who certainly exposed the logic of Marxist thought in a way that leaves no hiding place for Marxists, of Pope Paul II, who must be taken seriously (in my opinion as a dangerous and retrogressive figure) in any history of the modern West, and Edward Said, a rootless cosmopolitan who was to the Arab world what Judt was to the Jewish world, a stripper-away of illusions.
Said was right about the need ultimately for a one state solution to the problem of Israel-Palestine but there are too many vested interests for his sensible view to prevail.
From here (in Part Three) Judt goes on to take a look at aspects of French, British, Belgian, Romanian and Israeli politics.
His excoriations of Israel say all that needs to be said on the matter, he writes well on the French struggle for meaning as a nation and he is suitably unimpressed with the utter nonsense of Blairism, for which Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the Emperor with no clothes might have been written. One hopes a veil may eventually be drawn over his (mal-)administration.
The two most interesting essays are on Belgium and Romania, countries scarcely considered in the Anglo-Saxon world except as problems. Both act as exemplars of fundamental problems underpinning a European Project now under immense strain as a result of the ‘credit crunch�.
Belgium, a non country like the African post-imperial states, is divided into ethnic North and South as much as the Ivory Coast. It remains a puzzle how it has held together for so long.
Romania (GDP was below Namibia’s in 1998) is poorer than some African countries and is a notorious political basket case in its own right. If a politician can be classed as truly evil, then Ceaucescu is definitely in the running.
Judt opens up to scrutiny just what the Eurocrats are taking on in trying to absorb the problems of such countries and about which they are in denial.
Belgium stands for the potential breakdown of Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom under economic pressure and the resentments that might be caused if German economic dominance turns East-Central Europe into a dominion in all but name.
Romania stands for the massive funding required to bring it and the Balkans into ‘civilisation� at a time when Greece, Ireland, Portugal and parts of the UK, Spain and Italy threaten to go backwards (though Judt was not to know how bad things would get in the years after 2007).
The fourth section on America is less self-assured. There is a typically courageous defence of Whittaker Chambers against the Leftist and liberal true believers who would undertake any twist rather than accept that the Soviet Union was involved in offensive espionage and that Alger Hiss might have been guilty as hell.
There is an unpersuasive critique of Kissinger. He does a suitable knife job on Gaddis� history of the Cold War � one of a series of triumphalist accounts of imperial victory that appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in the last decade and whose main purpose seems to have been to make the Anglo-Saxon Establishment feel good about itself.
His review of the Cuban Crisis reminds us (again, thinking of the current fiasco in the Ivory Coast) that elected politicians are generally going to be smarter than their opponents and the bureaucrats who surround them.
Major wars can start because one side misunderstands the other side’s priorities. Two different essays suggests that we should feel very lucky that Cold War Berlin (this time innocently) did not thrust us into a catastrophic war for the third time in a century � psycho-geographers must have a field day wondering what dark emanation makes that imperial city into the vortex of such actual and nearly missed horror: a lesson perhaps for our Euro-federalists.
All in all, excellent essays in a book that can be dipped in and out of to profit by anyone who wants to understand the world we live in today. Above all, it offers real insights into the puffed up and rather silly world of the officially sanctioned public intellectual. How they must have hated Judt because he was supposed to be one of their own.
Instead, as a humane and liberal Jew, he pointed out the foolishnesses of his own class whilst wholly respecting the importance of reasoned engagement with the issues of the day. He certainly saw through the nonsense perpetrated by Tony Blair, the new Radical Centre (which he persists in calling ‘liberal�) and Israel.
The book is by no means a polemic. Perhaps two or three essays out of 24 or so slip into this category and are a bit tiresome for that reason. The vast majority are thoughtful, very well researched, reasonable and instructive.
Above all, he is humane � on this, read his moving essays on Primo Levi, whose subtle response to the Shoah confused and irritated those determined to ‘take positions� and on Sperber, another ‘survivor�, who gives cause for Judt to explore what the shock of the Holocaust, its breaking of all the rules, meant to this generation of intellectuals.
Indeed, if there is a hidden theme in the book, it is that ‘taking positions� without independent thought on the facts is precisely the death of intellectual endeavour.
What Judt does, especially in the essays on prominent Jewish European intellectuals, is point out something forgotten entirely by their intellectually primitive Zionist and Neo-Conservative heirs in New York � that the European Jewish experience was massively complex and truly cosmopolitan.
Part of the shock of the Shoah was that the assault on many of them was by their own kind. It was Germans and Hungarians murdering Germans and Hungarians in their eyes and the Jewish aspects of the assault only hit home as it was happening and afterwards. Zionism is a very comprehensible response to the shock but it was never inevitable that Jews would all be obliged to be Zionists until that point.
I have left to last the key theme of much of the book � remembrance. Not in the sense of the ‘holocaust industry� or memorialisation as fixed ritual but the constant attempt to think through the meaning of past events and relate them to the past. This is what history really is, not simple narratives that are designed to allow us to take this or that 'position�.
Thus, the holocaust is placed in its context of Bela Kun and Israel is not understood properly until it comes to terms with the fact of the Nakba and does not think that the Holocaust trumps what Israel did to the Arabs in some ridiculous Benthamite calculation.
Critical engagement with history, based on a humane understanding of personal responses and meanings, their purposes and their vulnerabilities, also means the ability to question narratives such as the determined obsession of many Americans to treat every challenge as if it was Munich. Iran stupidly becomes seen as Nazi Germany when it is nothing of the kind.
Those who saw Cuba as Munich in Kennedy’s circle were the ones who would have driven us into genocidal holocaust in the early 1960s. If you really want to be scared, read about the mind-set of the military loons in the President’s counsels. Dr Strangelove was creepily close to the truth of the matter.
As Judt says, even today, “the United States today is the only advanced country that still glorifies and exalts the military, a sentiment familiar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown today.�
With ideological rigidity on the one side and bureaucrats without humane sense on the other as permanent features of global politics, and developed to a fine art of ignorance in modern America, it is no surprise to see Guantanamo, the panic over Wikileaks, drone murder of civilians, the demands over extradition and access to private data overseas, constant small-scale war and the brutalisation and torture of an unfortunate little man called Bradley Manning.
If only Tony Judt were alive to chronicle it all �
November 29, 2015
Цю книжку можна, за великим рахунком, підсумувати одним демотиватором:
Джадт пише із непохитною певністю, що світ котиться в пекло, але раз всі ми там будемо, то в тому напрямку тим паче треба котитися with style and panache, загорнувшись у білий плащ довгих маловживаних слів грецького походження, не скуплячись на отруту всім, кого він вважає неправими (щедрою рукою роздає характеристики типу "the fawning hyena to the preening lions of Parisian intellectual life", "the Old Testament invoked as a sort of real estate contract with a partisan God" чи там "national narrative of macho victimhood").
Ця книжка - збірка статей (переважно рецензій і принагідних політичних нарисів), оформлена вступом під умовним заголовком "Ви всі мудаки і не лікуєтесь". Частина статей покликається на суто американські реалії й тому цікава лише тим, хто глибоко цікавиться spectator sport під назвою "американська політика"; досить багато про Ізраїль - велику любов юності Джадта, який певний час жив у кібуці і волонтерив під час Шестиденної війни, доки країна не перетворилася в його інтерпретації на повчальний приклад того, як робити не треба ні в якому разі, ні, взагалі нікому, ніяк, ні за яких обставин; і про іншу любов його юності - марксизм, його uses and abuses, як він здобув популярність і з нею розпрощався, про що Джадт явно жалкує: "У тому, що нині ми маємо справу зі світом, позбавленим великого наративу соціального прогресу, без політично достовірного проекту соціальної справедливості, значною мірою винні Ленін і його наступники, які отруїли цю криницю."
Інші центральні теми:
1) Джадт стверджує, що "we wear the last century lightly" (тут йдеться радше про американців, судячи з подальшого контексту). Історія стає або джерелом прикладів тріумфу, або вибіркових спогадів про страждання, підігнаних під якийсь політичний урок, що створює підступну ілюзію, наче все позаду, всі уроки засвоєні, і тепер ми прямуємо у світле майбутнє, не обтяжені помилками минулого. У випадку США, на відміну від Європи, ситуацію ускладнює ще й те, що про ту ж Другу світову пишуть у тріумфалістському дусі і тому вірять, що війни - ефективний спосіб вирішувати проблеми (й тому вічно влазять у якусь фігню). Додатково ускладнюють проблему всякі етнічні історії, які привчають бачити минуле виключно крізь призму страждань свого народу - старомодна наративна національна історія (це те, що у нас у школі, я так розумію) бодай пояснювала теперішнє через покликання на минуле, а тепер у минулого нема якоїсь наративної форми і користі з нього, як з козла молока.
2) ХХ століття дискредитувало великі наративи нації, історії і прогресу, тож ми зараз говоримо про наші колективні завдання у суто економічних термінах (prosperity, growth, GDP, efficiency, output, interest rate, stock market performances) - мовби це самоціль, а не засіб досягнення соціальних і політичних завдань. Джадт стверджує, що демократія, де йдеться лише про економічну політику, а та своєю чергою залежить від неполітичних акторів (центральні банки, транснаціональні корпорації і тд), приречена перестати бути функціональною демократією.
3) Інша тема - про роль держави. Це така суто американська мулька - як у нас розігрують, наприклад, мовну карту, так у США одна з двох партій починає кричати, що будь-яка державна сітка соціальної безпеки - це привид комунізму, який будує гулаг у передмісті Нью-Йорка. Натомість Джадт з прикладами (європейськими) показує, що welfare state - не перший етап соціалістичної революції, а профілактичний захід, захист від економічної депресії, яка призводить до поляризації населення (тут вже є варіації - або вправо, або вліво, але якесь хитання буде). Каже, що лібералізм зумів перемогти своїх антидемократичних критиків і справа, і зліваі тому, що здавалося, наче на найгірші недоліки капіталізму є така протидія, й аналізує, що не може зробити, в принципі, ніхто, крім держави.
4) Наголошує, що буває, коли страх знову стає активним інгредієнтом політичного життя (страх тероризму, але важливіше - страх швидкості змін, страх втратити все при нерівномірному розподілі ресурсів і тд): а буває круте піке. Причому ці всі есе писалися десять років тому, і ті ситуації, на які він покликається (Ізраїль; погано інтегровані маргінальні спільноти в Європі), за ці десять років іще більше посипалися.
Коротше, читво не оптимістичне, але стилістично блискуче і дотепне.
Джадт пише із непохитною певністю, що світ котиться в пекло, але раз всі ми там будемо, то в тому напрямку тим паче треба котитися with style and panache, загорнувшись у білий плащ довгих маловживаних слів грецького походження, не скуплячись на отруту всім, кого він вважає неправими (щедрою рукою роздає характеристики типу "the fawning hyena to the preening lions of Parisian intellectual life", "the Old Testament invoked as a sort of real estate contract with a partisan God" чи там "national narrative of macho victimhood").
Ця книжка - збірка статей (переважно рецензій і принагідних політичних нарисів), оформлена вступом під умовним заголовком "Ви всі мудаки і не лікуєтесь". Частина статей покликається на суто американські реалії й тому цікава лише тим, хто глибоко цікавиться spectator sport під назвою "американська політика"; досить багато про Ізраїль - велику любов юності Джадта, який певний час жив у кібуці і волонтерив під час Шестиденної війни, доки країна не перетворилася в його інтерпретації на повчальний приклад того, як робити не треба ні в якому разі, ні, взагалі нікому, ніяк, ні за яких обставин; і про іншу любов його юності - марксизм, його uses and abuses, як він здобув популярність і з нею розпрощався, про що Джадт явно жалкує: "У тому, що нині ми маємо справу зі світом, позбавленим великого наративу соціального прогресу, без політично достовірного проекту соціальної справедливості, значною мірою винні Ленін і його наступники, які отруїли цю криницю."
Інші центральні теми:
1) Джадт стверджує, що "we wear the last century lightly" (тут йдеться радше про американців, судячи з подальшого контексту). Історія стає або джерелом прикладів тріумфу, або вибіркових спогадів про страждання, підігнаних під якийсь політичний урок, що створює підступну ілюзію, наче все позаду, всі уроки засвоєні, і тепер ми прямуємо у світле майбутнє, не обтяжені помилками минулого. У випадку США, на відміну від Європи, ситуацію ускладнює ще й те, що про ту ж Другу світову пишуть у тріумфалістському дусі і тому вірять, що війни - ефективний спосіб вирішувати проблеми (й тому вічно влазять у якусь фігню). Додатково ускладнюють проблему всякі етнічні історії, які привчають бачити минуле виключно крізь призму страждань свого народу - старомодна наративна національна історія (це те, що у нас у школі, я так розумію) бодай пояснювала теперішнє через покликання на минуле, а тепер у минулого нема якоїсь наративної форми і користі з нього, як з козла молока.
2) ХХ століття дискредитувало великі наративи нації, історії і прогресу, тож ми зараз говоримо про наші колективні завдання у суто економічних термінах (prosperity, growth, GDP, efficiency, output, interest rate, stock market performances) - мовби це самоціль, а не засіб досягнення соціальних і політичних завдань. Джадт стверджує, що демократія, де йдеться лише про економічну політику, а та своєю чергою залежить від неполітичних акторів (центральні банки, транснаціональні корпорації і тд), приречена перестати бути функціональною демократією.
3) Інша тема - про роль держави. Це така суто американська мулька - як у нас розігрують, наприклад, мовну карту, так у США одна з двох партій починає кричати, що будь-яка державна сітка соціальної безпеки - це привид комунізму, який будує гулаг у передмісті Нью-Йорка. Натомість Джадт з прикладами (європейськими) показує, що welfare state - не перший етап соціалістичної революції, а профілактичний захід, захист від економічної депресії, яка призводить до поляризації населення (тут вже є варіації - або вправо, або вліво, але якесь хитання буде). Каже, що лібералізм зумів перемогти своїх антидемократичних критиків і справа, і зліваі тому, що здавалося, наче на найгірші недоліки капіталізму є така протидія, й аналізує, що не може зробити, в принципі, ніхто, крім держави.
4) Наголошує, що буває, коли страх знову стає активним інгредієнтом політичного життя (страх тероризму, але важливіше - страх швидкості змін, страх втратити все при нерівномірному розподілі ресурсів і тд): а буває круте піке. Причому ці всі есе писалися десять років тому, і ті ситуації, на які він покликається (Ізраїль; погано інтегровані маргінальні спільноти в Європі), за ці десять років іще більше посипалися.
Коротше, читво не оптимістичне, але стилістично блискуче і дотепне.
Read
June 21, 2024Збірка статей кінця дев'яностих - початку нульових років, переважно рецензій на книжки, написаних Джадтом на замовлення різних видань й оздоблена передмовою. Загальне мотто - світ котиться у прірву, попри те, що Холодна війна і ХХ століття завершилися, всіх врятує welfare state. Тобто нічого нового, якщо ви читали публіцистику Джадта � читання приємне, але не обов'язкове. Можна відчути ностальгію за часами, коли найбільшим ворогом прогресивного людства був Джордж Буш-молодший.
April 3, 2025
Як можна здогадатись із назви, у книзі багато критики � мілітаризований Ізраїль,
зовнішня політика США, отруєні комунізмом європейські, та перш за все французькі, інтелектуали, уряд Британії, соціальні політики Європи та ще багато всього.
Видана у 2008 році, книга пророкує похмуре майбутнє, якщо й далі провадити усталені з
минулого століття політики. І зараз (в 2025) читати це сумно, бо передбачення автора справджуються.
Основна думка Джадта, якщо я правильно зрозумів, - це повернення ролі держави як єдиного способу подолання соціальних нерівностей, які набирають загрожуючих
обертів. А це, до речі, шлях до потенційного відродження революції пролетаріату. Нічого не нагадує?
З приємного - саме Україна зараз � це той каталізатор, який змушує Європу прокинутись, взяти відповідальність та відновити ідеї, які загубились в капіталістичному світі.
Хочу наголосити, що цей відгук дуже кострубатий та спрощений. Коротко розказати про книгу неможливо. Тема складна, без великого інтересу та вдумливого читання тут не обійтись.
А знизив оцінку, бо тут великий акцент на персоналіях, що я не дуже люблю, і вступ, який за смисловим навантаженням засліпив основну частину.
зовнішня політика США, отруєні комунізмом європейські, та перш за все французькі, інтелектуали, уряд Британії, соціальні політики Європи та ще багато всього.
Видана у 2008 році, книга пророкує похмуре майбутнє, якщо й далі провадити усталені з
минулого століття політики. І зараз (в 2025) читати це сумно, бо передбачення автора справджуються.
Основна думка Джадта, якщо я правильно зрозумів, - це повернення ролі держави як єдиного способу подолання соціальних нерівностей, які набирають загрожуючих
обертів. А це, до речі, шлях до потенційного відродження революції пролетаріату. Нічого не нагадує?
З приємного - саме Україна зараз � це той каталізатор, який змушує Європу прокинутись, взяти відповідальність та відновити ідеї, які загубились в капіталістичному світі.
Хочу наголосити, що цей відгук дуже кострубатий та спрощений. Коротко розказати про книгу неможливо. Тема складна, без великого інтересу та вдумливого читання тут не обійтись.
А знизив оцінку, бо тут великий акцент на персоналіях, що я не дуже люблю, і вступ, який за смисловим навантаженням засліпив основну частину.
May 12, 2016
I admit, my ambivalence about this book might just be evidence of Judt fatigue, in the sense that I've read a bunch of his books over the last year or two, and that this is an unnecessarily long compendium of NYRB essays, and most importantly in the sense that I no longer learn anything new about Tony Judt by reading his essays. I know what he's going to say. I know that, about 75% of the time, he is absolutely spot on, and that he'll write well, and so on.
But all that reading has also led me to an odd place. I no longer care to hear Tony Judt slam, e.g., Hobsbawm for not speaking out against Soviet idiocy, not because there wasn't a whole bunch of Soviet idiocy, and not because Hobsbawm is blameless, but because Judt studiously ignores those leftist intellectuals who *did* slam Soviet idiocy (there are essays here on centrists who slammed it, and on conservatives who slammed it, and on leftists who didn't slam it, but not even a single essay on the French intellectuals who did, and France is Judt's specialty). Why? There's no good reason, unless he decided that writing about, e.g., Simone Weil would damage his own standing as objective anti-Soviet intellectual by associating him with the 'left'.
Meanwhile, at the other end of his professional activities, he goes to town on American intellectuals cravenly supporting Iraq, and doesn't mention leftists, because, as he puts it, he restricts his "discussion to intellectuals with significant public influence or readership, i.e., those who mattered." Now, Chomsky is not my favorite human being, but I would have thought he fit that description pretty well. Leftists do matter, and leftists objected to the war, just as many of them objected to the USSR.
This matters because Judt wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be the great pro-anti-communist of the twentieth century, but doesn't want to trace the links between pro-anti-communism in the eighties and American bellicosity in the 2000s. He doesn't see, or doesn't want to see, that the social democracy he so brilliantly championed in this late work was undermined precisely because there was no alternative offered, and there was no alternative because anyone who suggested an alternative was immediately classified as a Socialist, and that was possible because people like Judt spent so much time arguing against fellow travelers (quite rightly) and no time arguing against neoliberalism, or arguing for alternative visions of leftism, which would have required him to distinguish consistently e.g., Soviet Communism, Communism, Marxism, socialism, and leftism. None of which he did.
That doesn't make him a bad person, but it does show the kind of thinker he was: stridently empiricist, hugely knowledgeable, but very limited when it comes to considering historical causation across periods; essentially anti-philosophical; and with horrific taste in literature.
Okay, that last one stands apart. But anyone who lists a bunch of mediocre anti-communist propaganda novelists and then calls them "the twentieth century world republic of letters" needs to be corrected.
But all that reading has also led me to an odd place. I no longer care to hear Tony Judt slam, e.g., Hobsbawm for not speaking out against Soviet idiocy, not because there wasn't a whole bunch of Soviet idiocy, and not because Hobsbawm is blameless, but because Judt studiously ignores those leftist intellectuals who *did* slam Soviet idiocy (there are essays here on centrists who slammed it, and on conservatives who slammed it, and on leftists who didn't slam it, but not even a single essay on the French intellectuals who did, and France is Judt's specialty). Why? There's no good reason, unless he decided that writing about, e.g., Simone Weil would damage his own standing as objective anti-Soviet intellectual by associating him with the 'left'.
Meanwhile, at the other end of his professional activities, he goes to town on American intellectuals cravenly supporting Iraq, and doesn't mention leftists, because, as he puts it, he restricts his "discussion to intellectuals with significant public influence or readership, i.e., those who mattered." Now, Chomsky is not my favorite human being, but I would have thought he fit that description pretty well. Leftists do matter, and leftists objected to the war, just as many of them objected to the USSR.
This matters because Judt wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to be the great pro-anti-communist of the twentieth century, but doesn't want to trace the links between pro-anti-communism in the eighties and American bellicosity in the 2000s. He doesn't see, or doesn't want to see, that the social democracy he so brilliantly championed in this late work was undermined precisely because there was no alternative offered, and there was no alternative because anyone who suggested an alternative was immediately classified as a Socialist, and that was possible because people like Judt spent so much time arguing against fellow travelers (quite rightly) and no time arguing against neoliberalism, or arguing for alternative visions of leftism, which would have required him to distinguish consistently e.g., Soviet Communism, Communism, Marxism, socialism, and leftism. None of which he did.
That doesn't make him a bad person, but it does show the kind of thinker he was: stridently empiricist, hugely knowledgeable, but very limited when it comes to considering historical causation across periods; essentially anti-philosophical; and with horrific taste in literature.
Okay, that last one stands apart. But anyone who lists a bunch of mediocre anti-communist propaganda novelists and then calls them "the twentieth century world republic of letters" needs to be corrected.
Read
June 16, 2016Profoundly, unapologetically intellectual historical essays by one of the smartest guys in the history game. It's a sign that I was writing down names of people he referenced constantly, and then adding their books to my reading list. From biographical sketches (solemn, equally critical and laudatory reflections on Kolakowski, Koestler, Said, and Camus, and unapologetic takedowns of Tony Blair, John Paul II, and Louis Althusser) to two excellent country analyses of Belgium and Romania, Tony Judt covers a hell of a lot of territory.
This isn't to say it's a flawless book -- the essays on American politics and culture are rather weaker, and he tries to dismantle "third way" politics while at the same time trying to formulate a theoretical framework that's not too different (in some places, he reads as damn-near neoliberal, and seems infuriatingly blind to the fact). But of all the modern intellectuals who have disavowed their Marxist youths, Judt is probably the least obnoxious. If you've read Christopher Hitchens, and are looking for a more measured, more refined approach, Reappraisals might be a good place to start.
This isn't to say it's a flawless book -- the essays on American politics and culture are rather weaker, and he tries to dismantle "third way" politics while at the same time trying to formulate a theoretical framework that's not too different (in some places, he reads as damn-near neoliberal, and seems infuriatingly blind to the fact). But of all the modern intellectuals who have disavowed their Marxist youths, Judt is probably the least obnoxious. If you've read Christopher Hitchens, and are looking for a more measured, more refined approach, Reappraisals might be a good place to start.
May 2, 2013
Tony Judt was a leading intellectual commentator on the history and politics of Europe in the later parts of the twentieth century and the first few years of the 21st before his early death. Judt's incisive analyses shocked those who preferred a quiet, comfortable tone from writers on contemporary politics. He combined a mighty knowledge of political and philosophical writings from the C19 and C20 with a piercingly clear eye for hypocrisy and for threats to what he described as liberal democracy.
For a superb review, check this one in The Guardian.
Reappraisals is a must read for anyone trying to understand relations between Europe, the UK, the US and the USSR now.
For a superb review, check this one in The Guardian.
Reappraisals is a must read for anyone trying to understand relations between Europe, the UK, the US and the USSR now.
July 22, 2010
This guy is awesome:
January 22, 2013
It is hard to know what to write that doesn’t sound like a publisher’s blurb, because this is another brilliant and lucid book. Some have said that it’s a sequel to Postwar. It’s not, though, since it covers the same era as the last decade of Postwar, and in any case, the series of essays that make up the book cover ideas and a range of issues far beyond Europe and its history. Many of the essays are previously-published book reviews, and perhaps that is part of what makes Reappraisals so enjoyable � it is also a book about books.
Tony Judt’s reviews, however, sometimes barely mention the reviewed book itself � he’ll present his own introduction first, and these really stand on their own, whether they’re biographies or commentaries on current events. Depending on whether he praised or shredded the book in question, it is always interesting to read the follow-up, because at the end of each piece, there is listed not just where it was originally published, but the resulting sparring between author, biographee (is that a word? I think not) and reviewer. NY Review of Books is where many appeared; now there’s another site where I could spend forever dipping into intelligent reviews. But I digress ...
It is not just Judt’s range that is so impressive; it’s the clarity, precision and honesty of his writing. He covers everything from the state of Israel (his one-state argument is so sane but will never come to pass, I fear) to biographies of Kissinger, Arendt and � the one that I bought the book for, I think � Primo Levi. I had not long ago read The Periodic Table and was deeply moved by it (though I still have not managed a GR review. The problem is, though, after reading Judt’s review of a biography of Levi, I’m not sure I could say anything meaningful except, lamely, � ... what he said�.)
Reappraisals begins and ends with “The world we have lost� (the memory and lessons of the 20th century) and “The social question redivivus�. The book is worth reading for those two short commentaries alone, and it is certainly one I’ll read again.
Tony Judt’s reviews, however, sometimes barely mention the reviewed book itself � he’ll present his own introduction first, and these really stand on their own, whether they’re biographies or commentaries on current events. Depending on whether he praised or shredded the book in question, it is always interesting to read the follow-up, because at the end of each piece, there is listed not just where it was originally published, but the resulting sparring between author, biographee (is that a word? I think not) and reviewer. NY Review of Books is where many appeared; now there’s another site where I could spend forever dipping into intelligent reviews. But I digress ...
It is not just Judt’s range that is so impressive; it’s the clarity, precision and honesty of his writing. He covers everything from the state of Israel (his one-state argument is so sane but will never come to pass, I fear) to biographies of Kissinger, Arendt and � the one that I bought the book for, I think � Primo Levi. I had not long ago read The Periodic Table and was deeply moved by it (though I still have not managed a GR review. The problem is, though, after reading Judt’s review of a biography of Levi, I’m not sure I could say anything meaningful except, lamely, � ... what he said�.)
Reappraisals begins and ends with “The world we have lost� (the memory and lessons of the 20th century) and “The social question redivivus�. The book is worth reading for those two short commentaries alone, and it is certainly one I’ll read again.
September 7, 2011
Reappraisals picks up exactly where Judt's Postwar leaves off, helping the reader navigate through the the mismemories and forgotten narratives of the postwar and Cold War era, all to easily forgotten in the tranquility of the 1990s West. This is to be expected as Reappraisals is, after all, a collection of previously published essays penned while the author was researching, compiling, and writing Postwar. Judt presents a West (and specifically an America) high on its successes and self-assured that no harm can halt the steady upward growth of its beloved free markets. Judt explains how the west awoke into the myth of its own greatness and believed, or perhaps it is better to say "believes", in its own immortality. This behavior indicative of a young man seems so out of character for a nation of its age, a theme explicit in Judt's criticism of the State of Israel, however once again Judt masterfully demonstrates how a sense of social community, characteristic of social democracies in Europe, became supplanted by the lure of the dollar and Euro. Judt also explores the fall of prominence of the public intellectual, as well as a series of character sketches that provide great detail to their condition and perspective.
In typical gusto and precision Judt navigates the uncharted waters of forgotten history, all to demonstrate how important the study of history is in the modern world. He cannot avoid favorite opponents, such as Maggie Thatcher, US Foreign Policy, Tony Blair and Israel, however his criticisms prove to be thought provoking and are hardly reactionary. This book is in some ways more impressive than Postwar, as it is comprised entirely of original material. Where Postwar meticulously references an array of important developments in as best of a non-biased manner that Judt can muster, Reappraisals pushes deeper into these topical developments to search for trends and indicators that of what world has been lost, for better or worse.
In typical gusto and precision Judt navigates the uncharted waters of forgotten history, all to demonstrate how important the study of history is in the modern world. He cannot avoid favorite opponents, such as Maggie Thatcher, US Foreign Policy, Tony Blair and Israel, however his criticisms prove to be thought provoking and are hardly reactionary. This book is in some ways more impressive than Postwar, as it is comprised entirely of original material. Where Postwar meticulously references an array of important developments in as best of a non-biased manner that Judt can muster, Reappraisals pushes deeper into these topical developments to search for trends and indicators that of what world has been lost, for better or worse.
July 11, 2008
Will be enjoyed most by those familiar with the intellectuals being discussed in the review essays offered in the first half. Also, those unfamiliar with the review essay style of the New York Review of Books may find the format unusual.
Judt can be a harsh critic, and sometimes simply unkind. While I'm no fan of the target, his essay on Althusser came across as just plain bitter and Judt just seemed to be pouring out his disdain for the post-Marxists around him.
However his amazing depth of knowledge about the history and especially intellectual history of 20th century Europe shows in every review. What I like best about Judt is that, while he is a progressive and highly political writer, he has absolutely no patience for the sympathy for the communist experiment that was exhibited by several generations of 20th century intellectuals.
Jewish intellectuals and critiques of Israel get very strong showings, understandable given Judt's own personal background, but there are also fascinating review essays that cover Romania, Belgium, England, Europe vs. US, and the question of the EU.
Judt can be a harsh critic, and sometimes simply unkind. While I'm no fan of the target, his essay on Althusser came across as just plain bitter and Judt just seemed to be pouring out his disdain for the post-Marxists around him.
However his amazing depth of knowledge about the history and especially intellectual history of 20th century Europe shows in every review. What I like best about Judt is that, while he is a progressive and highly political writer, he has absolutely no patience for the sympathy for the communist experiment that was exhibited by several generations of 20th century intellectuals.
Jewish intellectuals and critiques of Israel get very strong showings, understandable given Judt's own personal background, but there are also fascinating review essays that cover Romania, Belgium, England, Europe vs. US, and the question of the EU.
April 13, 2017
A collection of essays by Judt written over the years, many of which are book reviews that were published in the NYRB. Some of the best essays are reviews of books by Eric Hobsbawm and Hannah Arendt, as well as a eulogy written for Edward Said. Upon beginning to read, I found that many of the essays were familiar to me, as I had read them at some time in the past.
In general, I'm not a huge fan of collections of essays that vary widely in subject, inducing as they do a kind of intellectual whiplash. Having said that I am always interesting in reading whatever I can by Judt, who was truly prophetic in his analysis of the 20th century and its implications for our present. The section of the book that resonated most was the explosively written introduction, offering paragraph after paragraph of brilliant insights on the consequences of forgetting 20th century history. The essays as a whole don't cohere into a "book" that well in my opinion, but nothing of Judt's is without great merit, including these.
In general, I'm not a huge fan of collections of essays that vary widely in subject, inducing as they do a kind of intellectual whiplash. Having said that I am always interesting in reading whatever I can by Judt, who was truly prophetic in his analysis of the 20th century and its implications for our present. The section of the book that resonated most was the explosively written introduction, offering paragraph after paragraph of brilliant insights on the consequences of forgetting 20th century history. The essays as a whole don't cohere into a "book" that well in my opinion, but nothing of Judt's is without great merit, including these.
March 13, 2021
Brīnišķīgi izglītojošas un ironiskas esejas par pagājušo gadsimtu. Iepazinu domātājus, par kuru eksistenci nezināju, padomāju par tādām lietām, kuras iepriekš nebija ienākušas prātā. Bet pāri visam man patika autora humors - spēja ironiski apsmaidīt citus. Totāls heiteris. Ar viņu kopā esmu gatava kritizēt pat Kisindžera diplomātiju un PSRS nesaprašanu. Dikti gribētu ar viņu draudzēties.
April 5, 2020
Il libro di Tony Judt, storico specializzato nella storia europea del novecento, è un interessante raccolta di saggi scritti tra il 1994 e il 2006, dai quali emerge la grande capacità di analisi e la lungimiranza dell’autore.
Tony Judt si chiede se davvero il secolo scorso non abbia nulla da insegnarci e se non siano state, invece, troppo frettolosamente rimosse esperienze che appaiono cruciali per comprendere lo sviluppo successivo della storia. Ciò che ulteriormente mette in evidenza è come la memoria del passato sia stata usata a fini politici, invece che per accrescere la comprensione dei fondamenti storici del tempo presente.
Il testo si articola in quattro parti, legate da un filo conduttore, ovvero l’individuazione dell’eredità intellettuale, sociale e politica del novecento, che, per l’appunto, è stata a parere dell’autore rimossa troppo in fretta.
La parte che più a destato il mio interesse è probabilmente la prima, dedicata ad alcuni intellettuali del novecento, epoca in cui agli stessi era ancora riconosciuto un ruolo pubblico. L’accantonamento degli intellettuali, di cui pure vengono messe a nudo ipocrisie ed errori, appare, alla luce di queste considerazioni, essere forse stato troppo radicale.
Oggi, forse, con la crisi attuale i cui podromi venivano individuati dall’autore, ci si è resi conto che il secolo passato è stato celebrato o deprecato, ma non davvero compreso, ma quando Judt scriveva questi saggi, forse non era così comune pensarlo.
Un’ottima lettura, dunque, il cui senso può essere forse racchiuso proprio un una frase dell’autore nella prefazione: “Crediamo di avere imparato abbastanza dal passato da sapere che molte delle vecchie risposte non funzionano più e potrebbe essere vero. Ma quello che il passato può aiutarci a comprendere è la complessità delle domande�.
Tony Judt si chiede se davvero il secolo scorso non abbia nulla da insegnarci e se non siano state, invece, troppo frettolosamente rimosse esperienze che appaiono cruciali per comprendere lo sviluppo successivo della storia. Ciò che ulteriormente mette in evidenza è come la memoria del passato sia stata usata a fini politici, invece che per accrescere la comprensione dei fondamenti storici del tempo presente.
Il testo si articola in quattro parti, legate da un filo conduttore, ovvero l’individuazione dell’eredità intellettuale, sociale e politica del novecento, che, per l’appunto, è stata a parere dell’autore rimossa troppo in fretta.
La parte che più a destato il mio interesse è probabilmente la prima, dedicata ad alcuni intellettuali del novecento, epoca in cui agli stessi era ancora riconosciuto un ruolo pubblico. L’accantonamento degli intellettuali, di cui pure vengono messe a nudo ipocrisie ed errori, appare, alla luce di queste considerazioni, essere forse stato troppo radicale.
Oggi, forse, con la crisi attuale i cui podromi venivano individuati dall’autore, ci si è resi conto che il secolo passato è stato celebrato o deprecato, ma non davvero compreso, ma quando Judt scriveva questi saggi, forse non era così comune pensarlo.
Un’ottima lettura, dunque, il cui senso può essere forse racchiuso proprio un una frase dell’autore nella prefazione: “Crediamo di avere imparato abbastanza dal passato da sapere che molte delle vecchie risposte non funzionano più e potrebbe essere vero. Ma quello che il passato può aiutarci a comprendere è la complessità delle domande�.
May 5, 2018
A superb collection of thought provoking essays in which Tony Judt looks back over issues arising from the events of the last century. He addresses each one in his characteristic style, clearly and carefully extracting the key issues and laying them bare for consideration. His topics range from Hannah Arendt and Arthur Koestler via Kissinger and Nixon, Tony Blair and the Cuban missile crisis. I would say in every essay he manages to cast more light on the facts, and explain hitherto unexplained subtleties. Such is the nature of history and the passage of time. It is supposed to aid understanding, yet with Judt, one wonders if we are not condemned to repeat our mistakes.
August 17, 2014
This is a collection of articles and reviews by the recently deceased intellectual, Tony Judt, subtitled “reflections on the forgotten twentieth century�. It is as much about the scholarly response to events as it is about those events themselves, many of the pages for instance are taken up with book reviews for the New York Review of Books. Judt’s style wins through above the boundaries of analysis however and what comes across is a well thought through scrutinised account of some of the “great� events of the past 60-70 years as well as a searing criticism of the academic writings attached to those events. The chapters are many and varied, usually around 20 pages long and thus crammed with information and critique. We learn of Koestler’s alienation from communism and his eventual descent in to pseudo-science which tarnished his reputation for many years. We understand how inextricably linked Primo Levi was to his Jewishness, much to his own indifference, similarly Manes Sperber. Hannah Arendt’s extreme linguistic polarisation regarding the “banality of evil� is picked up on, and her own confusion which renders her writings as best read in small chunks, as well as her lifelong discourse with the state of Israel. A chapter on Albert Camus betrays an authorial favouritism, rare for a professional writer such as Judt. This is tempered by the intense excoriation of Louis Althusser and his pick n� mix Marxism. Eric Hobsbawm’s memoirs are dealt with tenderly but in a robust fashion which draws on some of the internation contradictions in the historian’s thought, though a heart-felt respect remains; perhaps for someone who has not altered their ideological course unlike for instance, Judt. Lezek Kolakowski’s work on the “main currents of Marxism� is loftily idealised and commended, mainly for understanding the flaws in the ideology as well as the benefits; many of which were never followed through on. The list of subjects covered is seemingly endless, Pope John Paul II’s conservativism, Edward Said’s “rootless cosmopolitanism�, an intellectual for whom the author holds the highest regard. The second half of the book moves on to more firm historical ground with the turn of “events, dear boy� but usually set against the backdrop of learned accounts. The military fall of France in World War II, Tony Blair’s disingenuous Third Way, an interesting account of a near none-state in Belgium. Romanian self deception and confusion appears briefly as do Tony Judt’s most controversial, and yet most prophetic articles on Israel. America, it’s foreign policy and the cold war take up a hefty chunk of the book, understandably given the domineering shadow of US hegemony throughout the latter half of the 20th century. The book finishes with an article published in 1995 concerning the social question regarding the European model of a welfare state vs third way sociology and right wing liberalism. This article is placed expertly to show how Judt’s own analysis of the situation was correct and how things are getting much, much worse from even that short time ago. A terrific book, and a good aside to his magnum opus, Postwar.
January 3, 2013
"Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap - and refills are free. Being largely without flavor, it can be diluted to taste. What it lacks in allure it makes up in size. It is the most democratic method ever devised for introducing caffeine into human beings. Now take a cup of Italian espresso. It requires expensive equipment. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous, suggesting indifference to the consumer and ignorance of the market. The aesthetic satisfaction accessory to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic impact. It is not a drink; it is an artifact.
This contrast can stand for the differences between America and Europe - differences nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic. The mutual criticisms are familiar. To American commentators Europe is 'stagnant.' Its workers, employers, and regulations lack the flexibility and adaptability of their U.S. counterparts. The costs of European social welfare payments and public services are 'unsustainable.' Europe's aging and 'cossetted' populations are underproductive and self-satisfied. In a globalized world, the 'European social model' is a doomed mirage. This conclusion is typically drawn even by 'liberal' American observers, who differ from conservative (and neoconservative) critics only in deriving no pleasure from it.
To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in trouble and the 'American way of life' that cannot be sustained. The American pursuit of wealth, size, and abundance - as material surrogates for happiness - is aesthetically unpleasing and ecologically catastrophic. The American economy is built on sand (or, more precisely, other people's money). For many Americans the promise of a better future is a fading hope. Contemporary mass culture in the U.S. is squalid and meretricious. No wonder so many Americans turn to the church for solace."
This contrast can stand for the differences between America and Europe - differences nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic. The mutual criticisms are familiar. To American commentators Europe is 'stagnant.' Its workers, employers, and regulations lack the flexibility and adaptability of their U.S. counterparts. The costs of European social welfare payments and public services are 'unsustainable.' Europe's aging and 'cossetted' populations are underproductive and self-satisfied. In a globalized world, the 'European social model' is a doomed mirage. This conclusion is typically drawn even by 'liberal' American observers, who differ from conservative (and neoconservative) critics only in deriving no pleasure from it.
To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in trouble and the 'American way of life' that cannot be sustained. The American pursuit of wealth, size, and abundance - as material surrogates for happiness - is aesthetically unpleasing and ecologically catastrophic. The American economy is built on sand (or, more precisely, other people's money). For many Americans the promise of a better future is a fading hope. Contemporary mass culture in the U.S. is squalid and meretricious. No wonder so many Americans turn to the church for solace."
December 6, 2021
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November 25, 2020
I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to Big History. I've been mainlining Big History for the last few months as I work my way through Fukuyama's epic "Political Order" series. Perhaps only gin has a similarly irresistible, intoxicating effect on me--the main reason that I rarely drink it. But I am powerless to resist Big History. I always go back for more.
So I turned to Tony Judt to temper the buzz. Judt was averse to Big History, even in his wonderful tome on late 20th century Europe, "Postwar," which I read several years ago and might revisit soon. In a monumental work of 900 pages, he consistently exemplifies a more mature form of historical reasoning whose narratives are small, cautious, and patiently constructed. Small History is the responsible adult, the careful collector who collates and analyzes facts and figures while carefully explaining the limits of its findings. Big History barges in and raids those curated cellars for the fuel that it uses to sustain itself. Where Small History is usually written by historians, like Judt, it is men (and they are almost always men) from other fields who plunder and pillage to create their grand narratives of historical direction and determinism.
Small History is a good tonic to my gin. Judt is a master of the form, picking at interesting threads in the historical record while resisting the calls of inevitability or predestination that make Big History so addicting. "Reappraisals" is composed of bite-sized analyses of various individuals, countries, and phenomena, mostly published in NYRB during the 90s and early 2000s. Judt convincingly cracks the pretensions of Communism, Anti-Communism, Neoliberalism, and many other -isms (forms or allies of Big History) without falling victim to the extremes of thought that sometimes plague lifelong contrarians.
Of course, he is not a perfect thinker. In these pages, Judt grinds his lifelong axe against mid-century French Leftists--sometimes to excess. Sartre, Beauvoir, and their compatriots had many problems; he accurately debits these flaws, but fails to credit the nuances that grant such thinkers continued relevance and resonance. Sometimes I suspect that his criticisms stem from a prototypical Anglo-American distaste for continental theorizing than more principled opposition.
At times, the essays are dated--they are strongest when grounded in history rather than then-contemporary events, many of which are no longer relevant. Incredibly, the 90s and 00s were a long time ago now...and how different were the concerns of that era! As I read Judt's jeremiads against Tony Blair or the Bush Administration, I couldn't help but reflect on the massive political battles of my teenage years--the War on Terror, most prominently--that are now mostly forgotten by political discourse.
Yet this American selective amnesia only supports Judt's most consistent point: the need to remember, and to remember *well* above all. The Iraq War, for example, has dropped out of popular discourse and some of its prime proponents (Frum, Kristol, etc.) have recast themselves as anti-Trumpist champions of Democracy and Reason. We should not forgive the warmongers or turn to them for wisdom, but the oblivion of memory into which the war has been cast will allow figures like these to launder their reputations and continue haunting our politics for the next decade.
Small History, then, is not just a preventive tonic against the big sweeping narratives that are fun but often wrong (or even harmful). Small History is the critical handmaiden in the task of remembering. "Postwar" was fantastic at this thankless work, showing, for example, how the European Union slowly formed out of various committees and commissions by accident and exigency rather than due to some Grand Plan of Wise Men. Those lessons may sound like trivialities, at times, but they are the actual Stuff that drives history. It is exciting and occasionally instructive to try and construct an overarching direction to human events--a telos towards which we stretch, a secret code that societies must obey (ala Hegel or Marx)--but that is all just an intoxicating fancy. History is so much messier, contingent, and difficult than is often taught or supposed, which is why it takes such careful and patient study to understand. Judt was one of the great guides of recent decades through the historical thicket of the 20th century. His presence is deeply missed in our age of perpetual forgetting.
So I turned to Tony Judt to temper the buzz. Judt was averse to Big History, even in his wonderful tome on late 20th century Europe, "Postwar," which I read several years ago and might revisit soon. In a monumental work of 900 pages, he consistently exemplifies a more mature form of historical reasoning whose narratives are small, cautious, and patiently constructed. Small History is the responsible adult, the careful collector who collates and analyzes facts and figures while carefully explaining the limits of its findings. Big History barges in and raids those curated cellars for the fuel that it uses to sustain itself. Where Small History is usually written by historians, like Judt, it is men (and they are almost always men) from other fields who plunder and pillage to create their grand narratives of historical direction and determinism.
Small History is a good tonic to my gin. Judt is a master of the form, picking at interesting threads in the historical record while resisting the calls of inevitability or predestination that make Big History so addicting. "Reappraisals" is composed of bite-sized analyses of various individuals, countries, and phenomena, mostly published in NYRB during the 90s and early 2000s. Judt convincingly cracks the pretensions of Communism, Anti-Communism, Neoliberalism, and many other -isms (forms or allies of Big History) without falling victim to the extremes of thought that sometimes plague lifelong contrarians.
Of course, he is not a perfect thinker. In these pages, Judt grinds his lifelong axe against mid-century French Leftists--sometimes to excess. Sartre, Beauvoir, and their compatriots had many problems; he accurately debits these flaws, but fails to credit the nuances that grant such thinkers continued relevance and resonance. Sometimes I suspect that his criticisms stem from a prototypical Anglo-American distaste for continental theorizing than more principled opposition.
At times, the essays are dated--they are strongest when grounded in history rather than then-contemporary events, many of which are no longer relevant. Incredibly, the 90s and 00s were a long time ago now...and how different were the concerns of that era! As I read Judt's jeremiads against Tony Blair or the Bush Administration, I couldn't help but reflect on the massive political battles of my teenage years--the War on Terror, most prominently--that are now mostly forgotten by political discourse.
Yet this American selective amnesia only supports Judt's most consistent point: the need to remember, and to remember *well* above all. The Iraq War, for example, has dropped out of popular discourse and some of its prime proponents (Frum, Kristol, etc.) have recast themselves as anti-Trumpist champions of Democracy and Reason. We should not forgive the warmongers or turn to them for wisdom, but the oblivion of memory into which the war has been cast will allow figures like these to launder their reputations and continue haunting our politics for the next decade.
Small History, then, is not just a preventive tonic against the big sweeping narratives that are fun but often wrong (or even harmful). Small History is the critical handmaiden in the task of remembering. "Postwar" was fantastic at this thankless work, showing, for example, how the European Union slowly formed out of various committees and commissions by accident and exigency rather than due to some Grand Plan of Wise Men. Those lessons may sound like trivialities, at times, but they are the actual Stuff that drives history. It is exciting and occasionally instructive to try and construct an overarching direction to human events--a telos towards which we stretch, a secret code that societies must obey (ala Hegel or Marx)--but that is all just an intoxicating fancy. History is so much messier, contingent, and difficult than is often taught or supposed, which is why it takes such careful and patient study to understand. Judt was one of the great guides of recent decades through the historical thicket of the 20th century. His presence is deeply missed in our age of perpetual forgetting.
March 6, 2017
Great collection of essays, mostly from NYRB - mostly book reviews that serve as a starting points for broader reflection on history, politics, Israel, left politics, Western liberalism and where it's going to develop into. Some points are developed in more in-depth in , lots of fun criticism of the current left:
The fact that most of these essays are around 15-20 years old lets you judge some of his predictions, and it's not always perfectly clear sighted, there's a sidenote somewhere that a 'moral appeal of some refurbished version of Marxism is likely to grow' - I haven't really seen that in the 15 years since this specific essay came out. Most of it painfully smart:
I'm thankful that these essays focus on books relatively forgotten now, making my to-read list swell up even more (1423 books! 17 years of reading) - , , , , and more now demand to be read, thank you.
If you read one essay of these, make it (try a certain relatively new site by a certain Kazhak graduate student for access if you don't have it). This essay came out in 1997 and it's message has only become more urgent, with a recent rise of the far right which addresses exactly the problems Judt warned us about:
But back home, America’s liberal intellectuals are fast becoming a service class, their opinions determined by their allegiance and calibrated to justify a political end. In itself this is hardly a new departure, of course: We are all familiar with intellectuals who speak only on behalf of their country, class, religion, “race,� “gender,� or “sexual orientation,� and who shape their opinions according to what they take to be the interest of their affinity of birth or predilection. But the distinctive feature of the liberal intellectual in past times was precisely the striving for universality; not the unworldly or disingenuous denial of sectional identification but the sustained effort to transcend that identification in search of truth or the general interest.
The fact that most of these essays are around 15-20 years old lets you judge some of his predictions, and it's not always perfectly clear sighted, there's a sidenote somewhere that a 'moral appeal of some refurbished version of Marxism is likely to grow' - I haven't really seen that in the 15 years since this specific essay came out. Most of it painfully smart:
What we have failed to grasp is that, on the eve of the twenty-first century, the state itself is now an intermediary institution too. When the economy, and the forces and patterns of behavior that accompany it, are truly international, the only institution that can effectively interpose itself between those forces and the unprotected individual is the national state. Such states are all that can stand between their citizens and the unrestricted, unrepresentative, unlegitimated capacities of markets, insensitive and unresponsive supranational administrations, and unregulated processes over which individuals and communities have no control. The state is the largest unit in which, by habit and convention, men and women can feel they have a stake and which is, or can be made to appear, responsive to their interests and desires.
I'm thankful that these essays focus on books relatively forgotten now, making my to-read list swell up even more (1423 books! 17 years of reading) - , , , , and more now demand to be read, thank you.
If you read one essay of these, make it (try a certain relatively new site by a certain Kazhak graduate student for access if you don't have it). This essay came out in 1997 and it's message has only become more urgent, with a recent rise of the far right which addresses exactly the problems Judt warned us about:
Why are we so sure that the far political Right is behind us for good—or indeed the far Left? The postwar social reforms in Europe were instituted in large measure as a barrier to the return of the sort of desperation and disaffection from which such extreme choices were thought to have arisen. The partial unraveling of those social reforms, for whatever reason, is not risk-free. As the great reformers of the nineteenth century well knew, the Social Question, if left unaddressed, does not just wither away. It goes instead in search of more radical answers.
September 18, 2024
Judt proved again that he was the master of the 20th century historiographer's craft.
December 17, 2020
Masterful. Prescient. Instructive.
December 24, 2010
Tony Judt was a left-wing intellectual; one would expect such a person to have some interest in the lives of the proletarians, but the first part of this book consists of essays about other left-wing intellectuals, prewar, postwar and contemporary. Almost all of them are Jewish, though Edward Said too makes an appearance. I didn't know before that Said once said, "I do not believe that authors are mechanically determined by ideology, class or economic history." Why would he have said that if he hadn't thought that otherwise people would think that he does believe it? The second part consists of essays on various topics in political history: a review of a book on the fall of France in 1940, an essay about Belgium's bizarre political organization, and so on. Judt is very critical of Israel, which he thinks is a colonialist country akin to South Africa in the apartheid era. He was teaching a class on European history at NYU, mentioned that Spain under Franco was "a symbol of oppression in an age of liberalism and freedom, and a land of shame that people boycotted for its crimes and repression," and said that he couldn't think of such a country now. A young woman said that Israel is such a country, and most of the students, many of them Jewish, nodded in approval. It is not there in this book, but Judt also wrote a positive review of Shlomo Sand's book titled "Israel must unpick its ethnic myth".
November 1, 2010
This book is frankly stunning. Covering a range of topics from the role of intellectuals in 20th century Europe to the failings of communism, both practical and ideological, to the recent history of Romania, to the rise and fall of the welfare state, this book is a tour de force. Also, since it is a compilation of separate essays, mostly written for the NY Review of Books, it lends itself to dipping in for quick but intelligent reads on whatever topic fits your fancy at the time. Judt is a prodigious mind who writes with witty and incisive prose, but he rarely sacrifices rigor just for amusing repartee. I found his essay about the life of fellow historian Eric Hobsbawn to be remarkable. I read it and re-read it and re-read it again. Also, his dismantling of the Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis' books about the cold war is so good it's frankly embarrassing and difficult to read by the end. That's how comprehensive and relentless his assault is! Overall, really a fantastic read. And, what's more, I think the title and timing are apropos. People have already consigned the 20th century, the bloodiest and craziest century in recorded time, to the dustbin of history. It is forgotten, and yet there is so much still to reappraise.
August 6, 2012
I rate this book 3.5 stars. The first half I would give 3 stars, and the second half I would give 4 stars. The book is basically a collection of extended book review written by Judt dealing with 20th century European issues (with a healthy dose of the United States and Israel mixed in). The first half of the essays deal with 20th century thinkers, many of them socialist/communist that I had honestly never heard of. I think that is a failing of my reading/education more than a failing of the book. The second half dealt with more historical and cultural issues, and I found most of these to be fascinating. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had more of a background in 20th century European thought. My one major criticism of the book that I feel worthy enough to give is that I found Judt to come across as incredibly arrogant. He certainly seems to know what he is talking about, but he strikes me as a guy who would scoff at an opposing argument rather than politely engage in it. I suppose as a critic and historian, he is entitled to his opinions, but sometimes it made me uncomfortable.
October 2, 2012
This book got such a great review in the NYT when it came out that I bought a copy for myself (and I rarely buy new books for myself!) It is as fantastic as it sounded. Tony Judt is one of our foremost historians and here he takes on the fact that we are a society that has forgotten how to debate ideas, we've forgotten our roots, we've forgotten how to engage in policy debate, social thought and public-spirited social activism. He "shows how much of our history has been sacrificed in the triumph of myth-making over understanding and denial of memory. His book is a road map back to the historical sense we urgently need."
April 22, 2011
Unusually, whilst one normally worries that collections of occasional pieces and book reviews may not stand as a whole outside the context of their original publication, Judt's short closing commentaries following his essays explaining their often fractious reaction made me wish that they'd been more contextualized by printing these letters alongside. As far as I'm concerned, academic infighting takes some beating and the prospect of a goaded Gaddis or a whinging Kissinger getting their comeuppance is quite something.
September 7, 2009
Actually, I listened to this as a download from Audible. A bunch of short(ish) essays, excellent for listening to while driving or exercising, well read by an actor. This is a collection of writings or talks the author did, often for magazines. The part where the author writes about important 20th-century figures about whom you don't hear every day (Arthur Koestler, Leszek Kołakowski) was fascinating and makes you want to run out and read the works of the authors mentioned.
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