The Ideologists’ Science

Days and Works

They said the revolutionary thrust would develop among the poor, in the working class. Instead, in Russia, Germany, France, Latin America the revolutionaries have been academic intellectuals, and the universities hotbeds of subversion. The revolutionary ideologies of our time have been rightly characterized as perverted theologies, and the movements organized around them as counterfeit enterprises of human salvation. Now, the one concern furthest from intellectual heirs of the Enlightenment has been religion. Why then would academically trained people enlist in something even faintly resembling a religious cause? Books have been written about this question, but one element has been curiously neglected: the fact that modern ideologies, for all their pervading irrationality, have still managed to present themselves in the academic gown of science.

GN

About the Author

Gerhart Niemeyer

Days and Works

They said the revolutionary thrust would develop among the poor, in the working class. Instead, in Russia, Germany, France, Latin America the revolutionaries have been academic intellectuals, and the universities hotbeds of subversion. The revolutionary ideologies of our time have been rightly characterized as perverted theologies, and the movements organized around them as counterfeit enterprises of human salvation. Now, the one concern furthest from intellectual heirs of the Enlightenment has been religion. Why then would academically trained people enlist in something even faintly resembling a religious cause? Books have been written about this question, but one element has been curiously neglected: the fact that modern ideologies, for all their pervading irrationality, have still managed to present themselves in the academic gown of science.