This is one of the most revolutionary ideas in the history of political thought: by extrapolation from an esoteric theory of knowledge, a new political theory is born with the most momentous practical implications. Its central thesis holds that the task of politics is to make man “virtuous,” and that the means to that end is the manipulation of man’s social and political environment, to be accomplished mainly by means of legislation, that is, by the state. Helvétius elevates the legislator to the status of the supreme moralist. He must have been aware of the implications of his theory for he spoke of the “art of forming man” as intimately connected with the “form of government.” Man no longer is God’s creation: he is his own product. Society, too, is a “product” rather than a given or “datum.”12 Good government not only ensures “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” (a formula which Helvétius seems to have devised), but it literally refashions man. The logic of Helvétius’s ideas inexorably leads to the conclusion that in the course of learning about human nature man “acquires an unlimited power of transforming and reshaping man.”13 This unprecedented proposition constitutes the premise of both liberal and radical ideologies of modern times. It provides the theoretical justification for using politics to create a “new order.”
Such ideas, whether in their pure or diluted version, hold an irresistible attraction for intellectuals. If, indeed, human existence in all its manifestations obeys mechanical laws that reason can lay bare and direct into desirable channels, then it follows that intellectuals, as the custodians of rational knowledge, are man’s natural leaders. Progress consists of either the instantaneous or the gradual subordination of life to “reason,” or, as it used to be said in Russia, the replacement of “spontaneity” by “consciousness.” “Spontaneous” existence, as shaped by millennia of experience and embodied in tradition, custom, and historic institutions, is, in this conception, “irrational.”
A life ruled by “reason” is a life ruled by intellectuals: it is not surprising, therefore, that intellectuals want to change the world in accord with the requirements of “rationality.”* A market economy, with its wasteful competition and swings between overproduction and shortages, is not “rational” and hence it does not find favor with intellectuals. They prefer socialism, which is another word for the rationalization of economic activity. Democracy is, of course, mandatory, but preferably interpreted to mean the “rational” rather than the actual will of the people: Rousseau’s “general will” instead of the will made manifest through elections or referenda.
The theories of Locke and Helvétius permit intellectuals to claim status as mankind’s “educators” in the broadest sense of that word. They are the repository of reason, which they believe to be always superior to experience. While mankind gropes in darkness, they, the “illuminati,” know the path to virtue and, through virtue, to happiness. This whole conception puts intellectuals at odds with the rest of humanity. Ordinary people, in pursuit of their livelihood, acquire specific knowledge relevant to their particular occupation under the specific conditions in which they have to practice it. Their intelligence (reasoning) expresses itself in the ability to cope with such problems as they happen personally to confront: in the words of William James, in attaining “some particular conclusion or … gratifying] some special curiosity … which it is the reasoner’s temporary interest to attain.” The farmer understands the climatic and other requirements for his crops: knowledge that may be of little use in another place and useless in another occupation. The real estate agent knows the value of properties in his area. The politician has a sense of the aspirations and worries of his constituents. Societies function thanks to the immense variety of the concrete kinds of knowledge accumulated from experience by the individuals and groups that constitute them.
Intellectuals and intellectuals alone claim to know things “in general.” By creating “sciences” of human affairs—economic science, political science, sociology—they establish principles said to be validated by the very “nature” of things. This claim entitles them to demand that existing practices be abandoned and existing institutions destroyed. It was the genius of Burke to grasp the premises and consequences of this kind of thinking, as expressed in the slogans and actions of the French Revolution, and to insist, in response to this experience, that where human affairs are concerned, things never exist in “general” but only in particular (“Nothing is good, but in proportion, and with Reference”14), and abstract thinking is the worst possible guide to conduct.
