Opinion and the world of possibilities

Editor's Note: This is the concluding essay in a three-part series in which Professor Morson examines the intellectual maladies of the intelligentsia. The first essay, which appeared in the Spring 1993 issue, drew upon Russian intellectual history to clarify the concept of “the intelligentsia” and suggested its utility for an understanding of the politicized segment of the American professoriate. In the second essay, which appeared in the Winter 1993–94 issue, he contrasted the deterministic theories so attractive to both these groups with choice as experienced in the day-to-day realm of contingent events. Continuing this analysis, Professor Morson now examines “chronocentrism,” the view that the present moment is intellectually privileged in comparison with the past, showing it to be another of the basic elements of utopian thought. Exploring the relationship of multiple possibilities to intellectual freedom and pluralism, Professor Morson argues that there is a close connection between the appreciation of “open time” on the one hand, and the belief in free-wheeling dialogue, the tolerance necessary for democracy, intellectual modesty in the face of the world's complexity, and a rich sense of opinion, on the other. This essay is an adaptation of the final chapter of his new book,Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time, and appears by the generous permission of Yale University Press.