Probably the most famous historical example of the practical political involvement of a top intellectual is the case of Plato. When he was given the opportunity to at least partially realize his philosophical ideas about the ideal state in practice, he, as is known, tried to do it in Sicily, which was ruled by Dionysius I, through his student Dion. Since he was able to say at the court there that "the ruler's personal interest is not good for the state", that scion of the old Athenian nobility and the greatest philosopher of his time barely escaped with his life and was sold into slavery. If that could be taken as the numerical value of a politically engaged intellectual, I remind you that, by a happy turn of circumstances, an admirer at the slave market bought Plato for 20 minas, which today would be, let's say, ten thousand dollars.
Another instructive example from antiquity concerns the Roman philosopher Seneca, who was exiled to Corsica for eight years by Emperor Claudius because of his appearance in the Senate. Untaught by experience, he later served as Nero's leading advisor for five years. He failed to convey his stoic beliefs to the frantic emperor, but they came in handy when his master forced him to commit suicide.
The case of the refined intellectual and first-class writer Petronius Arbitrator, who, once too close to the emperor, ended up with severed veins in a bath of hot water, comes from the same period - to end the presentation of ancient examples. The intellectual could only take revenge on Nero by breaking it into pieces and preventing him from grabbing his expensive wine vessel, worth, they say, 300.000 sesterces.
SCRUPULOUSNESS AS AN INTERRUPTION IN ACTIVE POLITICS
In the most general sense, an intellectual in practical, so-called daily politics is a being displaced from his natural environment. In a new environment, possible mistakes and dangers lurk for him, he is usually clumsy, clumsy and vulnerable, something like Baudelaire's albatross on the deck of a ship. Once he finds himself in politics, he will preserve his dignity, and perhaps even a certain nobility, only by respecting three clear conditions: not to become ambitious, not to "play around" (which is typical of intellectuals and children), and (which is without a doubt the hardest) to not start taking himself too seriously.
An intellectual, according to the definition to which I am inclined, is committed to individual reasoning and action, which is in fundamental opposition to the principles of party-political, again by definition, teamwork. The inevitable consequence is conflicts within one's own corps, even among, in general, like-minded people. Theoretical knowledge and the individual conclusions based on it, characteristic of an intellectual, inevitably cause disagreements with those, by nature of the majority, comrades whose horizon is limited to the immediate goal, active action and measurable results.
While an intellectual, as a rule, uses the arguments of reason, a practical politician naturally takes more into account the emotions and even the impulses of the masses. In everyday political action, this proves to be an insurmountable obstacle to cooperation, since the finer spiritual structure naturally shies away from pandering to material motivation and lower-order urges in general. The reason of reason, if ever, can prevail over emotions only in some extreme situations, when it comes to survival, and even then it is not accepted because it is convincing but because it is salutary, which in other words means that it is not logic that prevailed, but the instinct of self-preservation.
True intellectual courage consists in the ability to admit to oneself and to communicate uncomfortable truths to others. This is, inevitably, the point at which a crisis often occurs among intellectuals committed to daily political action. The compromises that are made in such situations are usually not healthy, they inevitably leave a bitter taste, and in more severe cases they seriously damage the inner integrity of the person and, even more, his peace of mind. For an intellectual who stepped into daily politics, the alternative is to give up, but that's where the principle contained in the ancient wisdom "Into the city when you want, and out of the city when they let you" seems to come into force. It has been confirmed many times that returning to the so-called ivory tower is neither a simple nor a pleasant endeavor. From the outside - accusations of unreliability and even cowardice inevitably follow, and from the inside (which is usually more difficult to bear) - a pang of conscience and a feeling of failure.
An intellectual, if he really wants to be, must have doubts, while a politician, even when he doubts, must not let it be noticed at any cost.
The essential difference is that the intellectual, already by habitus, predominantly and constantly searches for answers, while the politician tries to convince the environment that he has found them.
Another characteristic of intellectuals, which is completely inappropriate in practical politics, is the tendency to question and correct the positions that have been reached. It is completely in line with the proven need of scientists and artists to be meticulous and precise, to go into finesse, to - idealistically speaking - strive for perfection. This kind of scrupulousness in active politics is actually a hindrance, since there is no room for perfectionism in it, that moves are made in broad strokes, and nuances are, after all, undesirable.
I also believe that a true intellectual (and perhaps even a valid human personality) can only be considered who is able to see and admit his own error. The fact is that for a politician such a thing is, to say the least, not advisable.
THE PRESENTATION OF PLEASANT SELF-ISOLATION AS A MORAL GESTURE
Such "laboratory-bare" considerations on the problem of intellectuals in politics on a purely theoretical level will inevitably lead to the conclusion that people of art and science have nothing to look for in the field of daily political activity. Life, however, sometimes creates situations in which some kind of political engagement becomes a kind of moral imperative for people of spirit and responsibility. That obligation may feel imposed and even unfair, but that does not make it any less.
In some happier times, intellectuals of the caliber of Stojan Novaković, Ljuba Stojanović or Slobodan Jovanović, in the role of politicians, naturally and successfully made Serbia a state, but this, historically speaking, was a consequence of the confluence of circumstances in which, on an occasion such as this, we can't go down. In recent times, however, it happened and still happens that intellectuals at a certain moment, the circumstances themselves, most often a wave of mass movements, simply float to the surface as leaders or some kind of symbol, but even in such cases the outcome is not for the common good, and even less for the good of the intellectuals who found themselves in such a position. As examples of this phenomenon, we could take Sartre from the end of the sixties of the last century or, closer to our environment, the position in which some top intellectuals found themselves, especially members of SANU, who initiated the creation of DEPOS in the spring of 1992. Since, largely thanks to their reputation and contribution, DEPOS managed to change the electoral system, from its list in December of that year. six, as they said at the time, "non-party intellectuals" were also elected as MPs. Having spent approximately three months in the Assembly, in the company of Arkan, Šešelj, Bija and Raka, all six (including Mihiz and Ljuba Simović) returned their parliamentary mandates with visible relief.
As intellectuals in general strive for self-examination and analysis of motives, it is probably easier for them - when they step into politics despite everything - if they present the abandonment of their pleasant self-isolation to the environment and to themselves as a moral gesture. And indeed, regardless of the relative value of motives, the fact is that we in Serbia, as it was during the nineties and in the state it has been in for the last ten years, are in a situation where resistance to political reality is equal to a gesture of pure moral revolt.
INEVITABILITY OF LOSING
I do not share the oft-repeated radical point of view according to which every intellectual, being by some definitions the "embodiment of the spirit of resistance", should be against every regime. However, I want to say that an intellectual, according to the definition that applies to me, simply has the obligation to be against the regime embodied by politicians like Milošević, Šešelj and today Aleksandar Vučić. In people of spirit there should be an almost organic need to oppose such regimes precisely because they are essentially unspiritual, anti-ethical and fundamentally anti-intellectual. It is not only, or even primarily, their crudely egalitarian and populist nature, but their need to destroy traditional values while at the same time swearing by them and using them for their own trivial goals. Here, of course, we are referring to values of a moral, educational, and even religious (that is, lately primarily church) nature. Whoever would come to terms with that, would agree to the cancellation of all measure, taste and decency - everything on which the culture, spiritual, and eventually the physical survival of a nation is based.
Entering active politics, the intellectual must come to terms with the fact that he can never be clear and simple enough. Accustomed to prior knowledge and assumptions, he exposes himself to the danger of being misunderstood by an incomparably wider circle of interlocutors, or, which is more often and more unpleasantly, misunderstood, and even blatantly abused by his opponents. By the way, in our time there are special experts for this type of abuse, who, like the sophists of ancient times, transfer their skills for money in the form of specialist courses.
In the same way, an intellectual who has stepped into practical politics must be prepared to renounce irony, for it is the privilege of the informed and sensitive. In contact with the masses, irony is extremely dangerous not only because it can remain without effect, but much more because malicious people (and there are always plenty of them, especially in the media as they are in our time) can always interpret an ironic statement literally, what with the point of view of political viability is often fatal. Metaphors, however, especially simpler and more graphic ones, can be useful. Experience shows that the average voter sometimes simply lights up when he interprets the meaning of the metaphor, after which he is often already half won over.
An intellectual who, either because he is tired of "philosophizing from the armchair", or because he is under pressure to "get involved", decides to enter the arena of active politics, must come to terms with the inevitability of losing, or at least being damaged, the reputation he gained in the field of his original activity. In a society such as ours, and above all due to the absence of institutional coverage, he falls victim to the intellectually and educationally inferior majority, which (most often unconsciously, but inevitably) cries out for an opportunity to desecrate the value that, even for a short time and even for the most noble of motives, has been lowered in her plane. Like everything else, the political engagement of intellectuals in general, and in our time and in our environment in particular, has its price, which is by no means small.
And finally, the oft-cited saying (usually attributed to Machiavelli or Loyola, and as such actually originated from a treatise by the 17th century Jesuit writer Escobar y Mendoza), as is well known, is that the end justifies the means. The insurmountable difference between an intellectual and an effective politician consists precisely in the fact that the former, if he really is what he is considered to be, will not reconcile with the meaning of that saying at any cost, while the latter builds his performance and reputation for the most part precisely on its application.
