A large-scale history of intellectual blindness
The focus of the "Incomplete Past" is the exceptionally prominent role of French intellectuals in European cultural and political life after the Second World War. Tony Judt analyzes the sharpest divisions of this community: how French intellectuals responded to the promises and betrayals of communism, how they maintained their commitment to radical ideas, faced with the hypocrisy of the Stalinist Soviet Union, the new Eastern European communist states, and France itself.
Judt interprets the intellectual dilemmas of the post-war years as a story that has not yet reached its conclusion. French intellectuals did not fully come to terms with the oppressive feeling prevalent in those years, which the historian calls "moral irresponsibility." The result, he insists, is an ill-will and confusion which have damaged France's cultural standing, especially in newly liberated Eastern Europe, and which still prevent the French themselves from coming face to face with their own ambiguous past.
Tony Judt (1948–2010) is a British and American historian, publicist, public intellectual. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Academy.
He taught at Cambridge, California, Oxford and New York universities. He founded the Remarque Institute at New York University and was its director.
The author of many studies on the history of Europe of the 20th century, in particular the history of France.
Several books by Tony Judt have been published in Ukrainian, including "Reflections on the Twentieth Century" (together with Timothy Snyder), "When Facts Change. Essays, 1995-2010", "Chalet of memory", "After the war. History of Europe since 1945", "Unfortunate Land", "Rethinking the Forgotten XX Century".
