Against the Current

Creativity is an over-used word these days…..The reality is greater and greater homogeneity. I have to rack my brains to come up with the names of individuals – including the dead - whose combination of original insights, language and sensibility makes me feel as if I'm being directly addressed. I’ve just tried to do that exercise – and here’s what I came up with….So far. Interesting that most tend to be awkward characters and out of sympathy with the prevailing mood. 

I need to include more women – and Chinese!! 

Name	Nationality	Reason for inclusion
Perry Anderson 1938-	UK/US	The insights his wide reading give of both other countries and previous periods – and the elegance with which they are expressed
Jacques Barzun 1907-2012	French/US	Historian – with special interests in cultural history and history of ideas
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945	German	Pastor whose protests and writings against the Hitler regime continue to inspire; and who was executed in the final days of the Second WW
Brecht poetry		He may not have been a very laudable character but his political poetry is very powerful
Peter Drucker 1909-2005	Austro/US	America’s first writer on management
JK Galbraith  1908-2006	Canadian/.US	The breadth of his experience in both public service and academia gave him the ability to express home truths in a pithy, amusing and provocative way – much to the discomfort of the powerful
Francis Fukuyama  1952-	US	He writes brilliantly – on a wide range of subjects
Johan Galtung 1930-2024	Norwegian	Initially a sociologist but has made major contributions to other social sciences. Occupied the world’s first chair in Peace Studies
David Graeber 1961-2020	US/UK	Anthropologist, anarchist and activist – and prolific writer
Chris Hitchens 1949-2011	UK/US	may lack the humility but compensates with his brilliant oratory and range of reading
Ivan Illich 1926-2002	Austro/South American	A cleric who moved on to work with Paolo Freire and to brilliant critiques of western society
Clive James 1939-2019	Anglo Australian	A hugely underrated essayist and aphorist
Paul Johnson 1928-	English	is an extraordinarily cultured and highly independent English historian whose book on “Intellectuals” did him no favours. “Modern Times” OK
Arthur Koestler 1905-1983	Hungarian/UK	Spanned journalism, literary and scientific work
Deirdre McCloskey 1942-	US	may be too much the American centrist - but is both highly original and a fantastically clear writer
Pankaj Mishra 1969-	Indian	A bit of an autodidact essayist
Edgar Morin 1921-	French	a real original – a prolific writer who breaks disciplinary boundaries and speaks frankly even about the most personal matters for which French academics take him to task. This is a superbly crafted profile
Michel Onfray 1959-	French	An original, prolific and provocative French thinker – who set up a people’s university in Brittany
Elinor Ostrom 1933-2012	US	Has straddled various disciplines – and produced the key intellectual justification for the new work on “the commons”