Making the difference: the émigrés, relativism and Enlightenment

Abstract

This paper examines the situation and ideas of the Eastern European Jewish émigré intellectuals who came to England in the pre-war period, often escaping from persecution. It deals in particular with Ernest Gellner and Karl Popper. Contrary to an earlier influential interpretation by Perry Anderson, it argues that rather than simply being assimilated to conservative English intellectual and cultural values, these thinkers typically had a more complex relationship to English culture reflecting their commitment to Enlightenment values and the public role and responsibility of the intellectual. This argument is related to the demise of the influence of postmodernism and the view that these thinkers can be seen as an important source of inspiration for current debates because of the way in which they rejected both foundationalism and relativism in favour of a committed liberal fabilism.