Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who engages in works by intellect including critical thinking and reading, research, writing, and human self-reflection about society. Many everyday roles require the application of intellect and intelligence to skills that may have a psychomotor component—for example, in the fields of medicine or the arts—but these do not necessarily involve the practitioner in the "world of ideas." The intellectual scrutinizes cultural ideas and writings, often using abstract, philosophical, and esoteric aspects of human inquiry to evaluate the thinking of others. The intellectual and the scholarly classes are often related: the intellectual may be a teacher involved in the production of scholarship and usually has an academic background, or may work in a profession or practice an art or a science.

Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of the foremost intellectuals of his time

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights activist and lawyer Shirin Ebadi was named one of the world's top public intellectuals by Foreign Policy[1]

The term "intellectual" identifies three traits:

1. erudition, and development of abstract ideas and theories;
2. producing cultural capital, as in philosophy, literary criticism, sociology, law, medicine, science, and so on;[2] and
3. artistic or creative output, such as writing, composing music, painting and so on.

Public intellectuals may propose practical solutions for public affairs issues and gain authority as a public figure.[3][4] Intellectuals often participate in politics and public affairs, either to defend a proposal or to denounce an injustice, usually by rejecting, producing or extending an ideology, or by defending a system of values.[5]

Historical definitions

In Latin language, at least starting from the Carolingian Empire, intellectuals could be called litterati, a term which is sometimes applied today.

Socially, intellectuals constitute the intelligentsia, a status class organised either by ideology (conservative, fascist, socialist, liberal, reactionary, revolutionary, democratic, communist intellectuals, et al.), or by nationality (American intellectuals, French intellectuals, Ibero–American intellectuals, et al.). The contemporary intellectual class originated from the intelligentsiya of Tsarist Russia (c. 1860s–1870s), the social stratum of those possessing intellectual formation (schooling, education, Enlightenment), and who were Russian society's counterpart to the German Bildungsbürgertum and to the French bourgeoisie éclairée, the enlightened middle classes of those realms.[6][lower-alpha 1]

In the late 19th century, amidst the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), an identity crisis of anti-semitic nationalism for the French Third Republic (1870–1940), the reactionary anti–Dreyfusards (Maurice Barrès, Ferdinand Brunetière, et al.) used the terms intellectual and the intellectuals to deride the liberal Dreyfusards (Émile Zola, Octave Mirbeau, Anatole France, et al.) as political dilettantes from the realms of French culture, art, and science, who had become involved in politics, by publicly advocating for the exoneration and liberation of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French artillery captain falsely accused of betraying France to Germany.[7]

In the 20th century, the term intellectual acquired positive connotations of social prestige, derived from possessing intellect and intelligence, especially when the intellectual's activities exerted positive consequences in the public sphere and so increased the intellectual understanding of the public, by means of moral responsibility, altruism, and solidarity, without resorting to the manipulations of demagoguery, paternalism and incivility (condescension).[6][lower-alpha 2] Hence, for the educated person of a society, participating in the public sphere—the political affairs of the city-state—is a civic responsibility dating from the Græco–Latin Classical era:

I am a human; I reckon nothing human to be foreign to me. (Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.)

— The Self-Tormentor (163 BC), Terence[9][10]

The determining factor for a Thinker (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist, et al.) to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which he or she is implicated and engaged with the vital reality of the contemporary world; that is to say, participation in the public affairs of society. Consequently, being designated as a public intellectual is determined by the degree of influence of the designator's motivations, opinions, and options of action (social, political, ideological), and by affinity with the given thinker; therefore:[lower-alpha 3]

The Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern them. (L'intellectuel est quelqu'un qui se mêle de ce qui ne le regarde pas.)

— Jean-Paul Sartre[12]

Analogously, the application and the conceptual value of the terms intellectual and the intellectuals are socially negative when the practice of intellectuality is exclusively in service to the Establishment who wield power in a society, as such:

The Intellectuals are specialists in defamation, they are basically political commissars, they are the ideological administrators, the most threatened by dissidence.

— Noam Chomsky[13]

Chomsky's negative view of the Establishment Intellectual suggests the existence of another kind of intellectual one might call "the public intellectual" which is the following:

[S]omeone able to speak the truth, a [...] courageous and angry individual for whom no worldly power is too big and imposing to be criticised and pointedly taken to task. The real or true intellectual is therefore always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society. He or she speaks to, as well as for, a public, necessarily in public, and is properly on the side of the dispossessed, the un-represented and the forgotten.

— Edward Saïd[14]

"Man of letters"

The term "man of letters" derives from the French term belletrist or homme de lettres but is not synonymous with "an academic".[15][16] A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, as opposed to an illiterate man in a time when literacy was rare and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term Belletrist(s) came to be applied to the literati: the French participants in—sometimes referred to as "citizens" of—the Republic of Letters, which evolved into the salon, a social institution, usually run by a hostess, meant for the edification, education, and cultural refinement of the participants.

Historical background

In English, the term intellectual identifies a "literate thinker"; its earlier usage, as in the book title The Evolution of an Intellectual (1920), by John Middleton Murry, denotes literary activity, rather than the activities of the public intellectual.[17]

19th-century

The front page of L'Aurore (13 January 1898) featured Émile Zola's open letter J'Accuse…! asking the French President Félix Faure to resolve the Dreyfus affair

Britain

In the late 19th century, when literacy was relatively common in European countries such as the United Kingdom, the "Man of Letters" (littérateur)[18] denotation broadened to mean "specialized", a man who earned his living writing intellectually (not creatively) about literature: the essayist, the journalist, the critic, et al. In the 20th century, such an approach was gradually superseded by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused, replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual person. In late 19th century, the term intellectual became common usage to denote the defenders of the falsely accused artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus.[19]

Continental Europe

In early 19th century Britain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term clerisy, the intellectual class responsible for upholding and maintaining the national culture, the secular equivalent of the Anglican clergy. Likewise, in Tsarist Russia, there arose the intelligentsia (1860s–70s), who were the status class of white-collar workers. The theologian Alister McGrath said that "the emergence of a socially alienated, theologically literate, antiestablishment lay intelligentsia is one of the more significant phenomena of the social history of Germany in the 1830s", and that "three or four theological graduates in ten might hope to find employment" in a church post.[20] As such, politically radical thinkers already had participated in the French Revolution (1789–1799); Robert Darnton said that they were not societal outsiders, but "respectable, domesticated, and assimilated".[21]

Thenceforth, an intellectual class in Europe was socially important, especially to self-styled intellectuals, whose participation in society's arts, politics, journalism, and education—of either nationalist, internationalist, or ethnic sentiment—constitute "vocation of the intellectual". Moreover, some intellectuals were anti-academic, despite universities (the Academy) being synonymous with intellectualism.

In France, the Dreyfus affair marked the full emergence of the "intellectual in public life", especially Émile Zola, Octave Mirbeau and Anatole France directly addressing the matter of French antisemitism to the public; thenceforward, "intellectual" became common, yet occasionally derogatory, usage; its French noun usage is attributed to Georges Clemenceau in 1898.

Germany

Jürgen Habermas' Structural Transformation of Public Sphere (1963) made significant contribution to the notion of public intellectual by historically and conceptually delineating the idea of private and public. Controversial, in the same year, was Ralf Dahrendorf's definition: “As the court-jesters of modern society, all intellectuals have the duty to doubt everything that is obvious, to make relative all authority, to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask".[22]

In the East

The word intellectual is found in Indian scripture Mahabharata in the Bachelorette meeting (Swayambara Sava) of Draupadi. Immediately after Arjuna and Raja-Maharaja (kings-emperors) came to the meeting, Nipuna Buddhijibina (perfect intellectuals) appeared at the meeting. These people were then busy in argument about whether anyone can shoot the target or not.[23]

In Imperial China in the period from 206 BC until AD 1912, the intellectuals were the Scholar-officials ("Scholar-gentlemen"), who were civil servants appointed by the Emperor of China to perform the tasks of daily governance. Such civil servants earned academic degrees by means of imperial examination, and also were skilled calligraphers, and knew Confucian philosophy. Historian Wing-Tsit Chan concludes that:

Generally speaking, the record of these scholar-gentlemen has been a worthy one. It was good enough to be praised and imitated in 18th century Europe. Nevertheless, it has given China a tremendous handicap in their transition from government by men to government by law, and personal considerations in Chinese government have been a curse.[24]

In Joseon Korea (1392–1910), the intellectuals were the literati, who knew how to read and write, and had been designated, as the chungin (the "middle people"), in accordance with the Confucian system. Socially, they constituted the petite bourgeoisie, composed of scholar-bureaucrats (scholars, professionals, and technicians) who administered the dynastic rule of the Joseon dynasty.[25]

Intelligentsia

See also: Manufacturing Consent

Addressing their role as a social class, Jean-Paul Sartre said that intellectuals are the moral conscience of their age; that their moral and ethical responsibilities are to observe the socio-political moment, and to freely speak to their society, in accordance with their consciences.[26] Like Sartre and Noam Chomsky, public intellectuals usually are polymaths, knowledgeable of the international order of the world, the political and economic organization of contemporary society, the institutions and laws that regulate the lives of the layman citizen, the educational systems, and the private networks of mass communication media that control the broadcasting of information to the public.[27]

Whereas, intellectuals (political scientists and sociologists), liberals, and democratic socialists usually hold, advocate, and support the principles of democracy (liberty, equality, fraternity, human rights, social justice, social welfare, environmental conservation), and the improvement of socio-political relations in domestic and international politics, the conservative public-intellectuals usually defend the social, economic, and political status quo as the realisation of the "perfect ideals" of Platonism, and present a static dominant ideology, in which utopias are unattainable and politically destabilizing of society.

Marxist perspective

In Marxist philosophy, the social class function of the intellectuals (the intelligentsia) is to be the source of progressive ideas for the transformation of society; to provide advice and counsel to the political leaders; to interpret the country's politics to the mass of the population (urban workers and peasants); and to provide leaders from within their own ranks as required.

The Italian communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) developed Karl Marx's conception of the intelligentsia to include political leadership in the public sphere. That because "all knowledge is existentially-based", the intellectuals, who create and preserve knowledge, are "spokesmen for different social groups, and articulate particular social interests". That intellectuals occur in each social class and throughout the right-wing, the centre and the left-wing of the political spectrum and that as a social class the "intellectuals view themselves as autonomous from the ruling class" of their society.

These autonomous class propagated intellectual sickness that resulted into degradation of political ideologies wherein power mongers enunciated class conflict and political power grapple. That in the course of class struggle meant to achieve political power every social class requires a native intelligentsia who shape the ideology (world view) particular to the social class from which they originated. Therefore, the leadership of intellectuals is required for effecting and realizing social change:

A human mass does not "distinguish" itself, does not become independent, in its own right, without, in the widest sense, organising itself; and there is no organisation without intellectuals, that is, without organisers and leaders, in other words, without [...] a group of people "specialised" in [the] conceptual and philosophical elaboration of ideas.[28]

In the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said that vanguard-party revolution required the participation of the intellectuals to explain the complexities of socialist ideology to the uneducated proletariat and the urban industrial workers in order to integrate them to the revolution because "the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness" and will settle for the limited, socio-economic gains so achieved. In Russia as in Continental Europe, socialist theory was the product of the "educated representatives of the propertied classes", of "revolutionary socialist intellectuals", such as were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.[29]

In the formal codification of Leninism, the Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács (1885–1971) identified the intelligentsia as the privileged social class who provide revolutionary leadership. By means of intelligible and accessible interpretation, the intellectuals explain to the workers and peasants the "Who?", the "How?" and the "Why?" of the social, economic and political status quo—the ideological totality of society—and its practical, revolutionary application to the transformation of their society.

Public intellectual

External video

"Role of Intellectuals in Public Life", panel featuring Michael Ignatieff, Russell Jacoby, Roger Kimball, Susie Linfield, Alex Star, Ellen Willis and Alan Wolfe, March 1, 2001, C-SPAN

The term public intellectual describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs discourse of society, in addition to any academic career.[30] Regardless of the academic field or the professional expertise, the public intellectual addresses and responds to the normative problems of society, and, as such, is expected to be an impartial critic who can "rise above the partial preoccupation of one's own profession—and engage with the global issues of truth, judgment, and taste of the time".[31][32] In Representations of the Intellectual (1994), in summarizing a quote by Edward Saïd, Jennings and Kemp-Welch state that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society".[33]

An intellectual usually is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy, e.g. the Third Way centrism of Anthony Giddens in the Labour Government of Tony Blair.[34] The Czech intellectual Václav Havel said that politics and intellectuals can be linked, but that moral responsibility for the intellectual's ideas, even when advocated by a politician, remains with the intellectual. Therefore, it is best to avoid utopian intellectuals who offer 'universal insights' to resolve the problems of political economy with public policies that might harm and that have harmed civil society; that intellectuals be mindful of the social and cultural ties created with their words, insights and ideas; and should be heard as social critics of politics and power.[35][36]

Social background

The American academic Peter H. Smith describes the intellectuals of Latin America as people from an identifiable social class, who have been conditioned by that common experience and thus are inclined to share a set of common assumptions (values and ethics); that ninety-four per cent of intellectuals come either from the middle class or from the upper class and that only six per cent come from the working class. In The Intellectual (2005), philosopher Steven Fuller said that because cultural capital confers power and social status as a status group they must be autonomous in order to be credible as intellectuals:

It is relatively easy to demonstrate autonomy, if you come from a wealthy or [an] aristocratic background. You simply need to disown your status and champion the poor and [the] downtrodden [...]. [A]utonomy is much harder to demonstrate if you come from a poor or proletarian background [...], [thus] calls to join the wealthy in common cause appear to betray one's class origins.[37]

The political importance and effective consequence of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906) derived from his being a leading French thinker; thus, J'accuse (I Accuse), his open letter to the French government and the nation proved critical to achieving the exoneration of Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the false charges of treason, which were facilitated by institutional anti-Semitism, among other ideological defects of the French Establishment.

Academic background

In journalism, the term intellectual usually connotes "a university academic" of the humanities—especially a philosopher—who addresses important social and political matters of the day. Hence, such an academic functions as a public intellectual who explains the theoretic bases of said problems and communicates possible answers to the policy makers and executive leaders of society. The sociologist Frank Furedi said that "Intellectuals are not defined according to the jobs they do, but [by] the manner in which they act, the way they see themselves, and the [social and political] values that they uphold.[38] Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a society; although the North American usage of the term "intellectual" includes the university academics.[39] The difference between "intellectual" and "academic" is participation in the realm of public affairs.[40]

Public policy role

In the matters of public policy, the public intellectual connects scholarly research to the practical matters of solving societal problems. The British sociologist Michael Burawoy, an exponent of public sociology, said that professional sociology has failed, by giving insufficient attention to resolving social problems, and that a dialogue between the academic and the layman would bridge the gap.[41] An example is how Chilean intellectuals worked to reestablish democracy within the right-wing, neoliberal governments of the Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–90), the Pinochet régime allowed professional opportunities for some liberal and left-wing social scientists to work as politicians and as consultants in effort to realize the theoretical economics of the Chicago Boys, but their access to power was contingent upon political pragmatism, abandoning the political neutrality of the academic intellectual.[42]

In The Sociological Imagination (1959), C. Wright Mills said that academics had become ill-equipped for participating in public discourse, and that journalists usually are "more politically alert and knowledgeable than sociologists, economists, and especially ... political scientists".[43] That, because the universities of the U.S. are bureaucratic, private businesses, they "do not teach critical reasoning to the student", who then does not "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society".[43] Likewise, Richard Rorty criticized the participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of intellect, especially academic intellect".[44]

External video

Booknotes interview with Posner on Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, June 2, 2002, C-SPAN

The American legal scholar Richard Posner said that the participation of academic public intellectuals in the public life of society is characterized by logically untidy and politically biased statements of the kind that would be unacceptable to academia. That there are few ideologically and politically independent public intellectuals, and disapproves that public intellectuals limit themselves to practical matters of public policy, and not with values or public philosophy, or public ethics, or public theology, not with matters of moral and spiritual outrage.

Criticism

The economist Milton Friedman identified the intelligentsia and the business class as interfering with the economic functions of a society

In "An Interview with Milton Friedman" (1974), the American economist Milton Friedman said that businessmen and the intellectuals are enemies of capitalism. The intellectuals because most believed in socialism while the businessman expected economic privileges:

The two, chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals, on the one hand, and businessmen, on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he's opposed to freedom for others. [...] He thinks [...] [that] there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities. [...] The businessmen are just the opposite—every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but, when it comes to himself that's a different question. He's always "the special case". He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing.[45]

Socrates proposed for philosophers a private monopoly of knowledge separate from the public sphere

In "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1949), the British economist Friedrich Hayek said that "journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists" are the intellectual social class whose function is to communicate the complex and specialized knowledge of the scientist to the general public. That in the 20th century, the intellectuals were attracted to socialism and to social democracy because the socialists offered "broad visions; the spacious comprehension of the social order, as a whole, which a planned system promises" and that such broad-vision philosophies "succeeded in inspiring the imagination of the intellectuals" to change and improve their societies.[46]

According to Hayek, intellectuals disproportionately support socialism for idealistic and utopian reasons that cannot be realized in practical terms.[47] Nonetheless, Albert Einstein said in the article "Why Socialism?" (1949), that the economy of the world is not private property because it is a "planetary community of production and consumption".[48] In American society, the intellectual status class are demographically characterized as people who hold liberal-to-leftist political perspectives about guns-or-butter fiscal policy.[49]

The Congregational theologian Edwards Amasa Park proposed segregating the intellectuals from the public sphere of society in the United States

In "The Heartless Lovers of Humankind" (1987), the journalist and popular historian Paul Johnson said:

It is not the formulation of ideas, however misguided, but the desire to impose them on others that is the deadly sin of the intellectuals. That is why they so incline, by temperament, to the Left. For capitalism merely occurs; if no-one does anything to stop it. It is socialism that has to be constructed, and, as a rule, forcibly imposed, thus providing a far bigger role for intellectuals in its genesis. The progressive intellectual habitually entertains Walter Mitty visions of exercising power.[50]

The public- and private-knowledge dichotomy originated in Ancient Greece, from Socrates's rejection of the Sophist concept that the pursuit of knowledge (truth) is a "public market of ideas", open to all men of the city, not only to philosophers. In contradiction to the Sophist's public market of knowledge, Socrates proposed a knowledge monopoly for and by the philosophers. Thus, "those who sought a more penetrating and rigorous intellectual life rejected, and withdrew from, the general culture of the city, in order to embrace a new model of professionalism", namely the private market of ideas.[51]

As an intellectual, Bertrand Russell was a pacifist who advised Britain against re-arming for World War I

Addressing the societal place, roles and functions of intellectuals in 19th century American society, the Congregational theologian Edwards Amasa Park said: "We do wrong to our own minds, when we carry out scientific difficulties down to the arena of popular dissension".[51] That for the stability of society (social, economic and political) it is necessary "to separate the serious, technical role of professionals from their responsibility [for] supplying usable philosophies for the general public". Thus, operated Socrate's cultural dichotomy of public-knowledge and private-knowledge, of "civic culture" and "professional culture", the social constructs that describe and establish the intellectual sphere of life as separate and apart from the civic sphere of life.[51][52]

In a reply to Lord Russell, British philosopher Bertrand Russell defined, "I have never called myself an in-tellectual, and no one has dared to call me one in my presence. I think an intellectual may be defined as a person who pretends to have more intellect than he has, and I hope this definition does not fit me."[53]

Richard Hofstadter quipped that, "an intellectual is a person who likes to turn easy answers into harder questions."[53]

Intelligentsia

Main article: Intelligentsia

The American historian Norman Stone said that the intellectual social class misunderstand the reality of society and so are doomed to the errors of logical fallacy, ideological stupidity, and poor planning hampered by ideology.[54] In her memoirs, the Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher said that the anti-monarchical French Revolution (1789–1799) was "a utopian attempt to overthrow a traditional order [...] in the name of abstract ideas, formulated by vain intellectuals".[55] Yet, as Prime Minister she asked Britain's academics to help her government resolve the social problems of British society—whilst she retained the populist opinion of "The Intellectual" as being a man of un-British character, a thinker, not a doer. Thatcher's anti-intellectualist perspective was shared by the mass media, especially The Spectator and The Sunday Telegraph newspapers, whose reportage documented a "lack of intellectuals" in Britain.[35][56]

In his essay "Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?" (1998), the American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick of the Cato Institute argued that intellectuals become embittered leftists because their academic skills, much rewarded at school and at university, are undervalued and underpaid in the capitalist market economy. Thus, the intellectuals turned against capitalism—despite enjoying a more economically and financially comfortable life in a capitalist society than they might enjoy in either socialism or communism.[57]

In post-communist Europe, the social attitude perception of the intelligentsia became anti-intellectual. In the Netherlands, the word intellectual negatively connotes an overeducated person of "unrealistic visions of the World". In Hungary, the intellectual is perceived as an "egghead", a person who is "too-clever" for the good of society. In the Czech Republic, the intellectual is a cerebral person, aloof from reality. Such derogatory connotations of intellectual are not definitive because in the "case of English usage, positive, neutral, and pejorative uses can easily coexist". The example is Václav Havel, who "to many outside observers, [became] a favoured instance of The Intellectual as National Icon" in the early history of the post-Communist Czech Republic.[58]

In his book Intellectuals and Society (2010), the economist Thomas Sowell said that lacking disincentives in professional life, the intellectual (producer of knowledge, not material goods) tends to speak outside his or her area of expertise and expects social and professional benefits from the halo effect, derived from possessing professional expertise. That in relation to other professions, the public intellectual is socially detached from the negative and unintended consequences of public policy derived from his or her ideas. As such, the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) advised the British government against national rearmament in the years before World War I (1914–1918) while the German Empire prepared for war. Yet, the post-war intellectual reputation of Russell remained almost immaculate and his opinions respected by the general public because of the halo effect.[59]

See also

• Anti-intellectualism
• Female public intellectuals
• FP Top 100 Global Thinkers
• Intellectual giftedness
• Intellectual history
• Intellectual honesty
• Intellectual inbreeding
• Intellectual property
• Intellectual rigor
• Intellectual virtues
• Intellectualization
• Intellectualism
• Intelligentsia
• Literacy
• Philosopher king
• Poet as legislator
• Pseudointellectual
• Scholar
• Scientist
• Tui (intellectual)

Notes

1. In The Twilight of Atheism (2004, p. 53), the theologian Alister McGrath said that "the emergence of a socially alienated, theologically literate, anti-establishment lay intelligentsia is one of the more significant phenomena of the social history of Germany in the 1830s ... three or four theological graduates in ten might hope to find employment in a Church post". In the essay, "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature", the cultural historian Robert Darnton said that the politically radical thinkers who had participated in the French Revolution (1789–1799), were not social outsiders, rather they were respectable, domesticated, and assimilated men. (pp. 1–40.) The Literary Underground of the Old Régime, 1982.
2. In the newspaper column, "Pilot Fish Among Sharks" (El País, 14 June 2014), the Spanish philosopher of ethics Fernando Fernández-Savater Martín explained the social function of the public intellectual with an anecdote about the Transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, at whose public conferences, in different cities, there always was present the same uneducated woman, who answered his query about her presence, by saying: "It's just that I like to listen to you, because you speak to us as if we were all intelligent."

   
   Effectively so, that is precisely the specific function of the intellectual: To treat everyone else as if they, too, were intellectuals. That is to say, to not attempt to hypnotise them, to intimidate them, or to seduce them, but to awaken in them the mechanism of intelligence that weighs, evaluates, and comprehends. One must start from the Socratic premise that everyone in the world reveals himself, herself intelligent when treated as if intelligent. Is that social function compatible with the offices of politicians? Because, more often than not, they tend to govern themselves by the cynical principle that: "One must not treat the public as if they were imbeciles, nor forget that they are imbeciles", which was established by the novelist Frédéric Beigbeder (who, not in vain, began his career as an advertising man); it is plainly obvious that those are opposite approaches. What is bad, is that the first approach demands effort from the interlocutors—attention, reflection, and dubious sizings-up, while the second approach flatters the primitive emotions of enthusiasm or revenge, and converts critical thinking to satire or to swearing curses, and social problems into notorious scandal... .
   
   Of course, the advocates of atavistic formulas periodically return to the charge, because those emotional formulas are easily assumed out of ignorance (populism, as you already know, is democracy for the mentally lazy), and, as such, are more necessary than ever; thus, if there be no intellectuals in politics, at the least, there should be intellectual ethos in public and in social discourse. Nonetheless, the lesson of personal experience often is negative, and the honest intellectuals whom I know always have returned crestfallen [from politics], like the pioneer Plato returned from Syracuse... ."[8]

3. In the essay "Existentialism is a Humanism" (1946), Jean-Paul Sartre explains the philosophical concepts of implication and engagement. In Notas para una lectura (Notes for a Lecture), the Catalan philosopher Ramón Alcoberro i Pericay explains Sartre's opinion of not being engaged with one's times, and the consequent implications: ... once one comprehends his [Sartre's] idea of "Man as Situation", it is easier to understand the concepts of "responsibility" and "engagement". To become engaged in a concrete situation—"to become embarked", said Pascal—is the consequence of presuming that one cannot live in pure, conceptual abstraction; everyone always is in a given "situation", and it corresponds to us to be responsible (to respond) to that situation; simply put, neutrality is not possible. In an editorial opinion in Les Temps modernes, in 1945, Sartre wrote, "I consider Flaubert and the Brothers Goncourt responsible for the repression that followed the Commune, because they never wrote, even a line, to impede it."[11] See: What is Literature? (1947)

References

Footnotes

1. Amburn, Brad (2009). "The World's Top 20 Public Intellectuals". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
2. Sowell, Thomas (1980). Knowledge and Decisions. Basic Books.
3. The New Fontana dictionary of Modern Thought. Third Ed. A. Bullock & S. Trombley, Eds. (1999) p. 433.
4. Jennings, Jeremy and Kemp-Welch, Tony. "The Century of the Intellectual: From Dreyfus to Salman Rushdie", Intellectuals in Politics, Routledge: New York (1997) p. 1.
5. Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France. De l'affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (The Intellectuals in France: From the Dreyfus Affair to Our Days), Paris: Armand Colin, 2002, p. 10.
6. Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1983), pp. 169–71.
7. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism, Second Edition. (1958) pp. 89–95.
8. Peces piloto entre tiburones, el País, 15 June 2014
9. Howatson, M.C. (Ed.) The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, Second Edition. Oxford University Press. 1993. "Heau'ton timōrū'menos", 77, pp. 260–61.
10. "LINGUIST List 4.1053: Jakobson quotation". linguistlist.org.
11. "Sartre. El existencialismo es un humanismo". www.alcoberro.info.
12. Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre, Gallimard, 1989, pp. 588–89.
13. Mitchell, Peter R. and Schoeffel, Michael John. Chomsky, Crítica, 2002, ISBN 8484323781, pg. 250.
14. Jennings, Jeremy and Kemp–Welch, Anthony. (Eds.) Intellectuals in Politics: From the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie, 1997. pp. 1–2.
15. The Oxford English Reference Dictionary Second Edition, (1996) p. 130.
16. The New Cassel's French–English, English–French Dictionary (1962) p. 88.
17. Collini p. 31.
18. "Littérateur, n.". Discover the Story of English (Second (1989) ed.). Oxford English Dictionary. June 2012 [First published in New English Dictionary, 1903].
19. Gross (1969); see also Pierson (2006).
20. The Twilight of Atheism (2004), p. 53.
21. From "The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature", in The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982).
22. Ralf Dahrendorf, Der Intellektuelle und die Gesellschaft, Die Zeit, 20 March 1963, reprinted in The Intellectual and Society, in On Intellectuals, ed. Philip Rieff, Garden city, N.Y., 1969, p. 51.
23. "Who is called Atel (Bengali)". Reshmi Bagchi. Anandabazar. 20 March 2013. Retrieved 18 May 2018.
24. Charles Alexander Moore, ed. (1967). The Chinese Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philosophy and Culture. U of Hawaii Press. p. 22. ISBN 9780824800758.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
25. The Korea Foundation (12 February 2016). Koreana - Winter 2015. pp. 73–74. ISBN 9791156041573.
26. Scriven 1993:119
27. Scriven 1999:xii
28. Jennings and Kemp-Welch, 1997:210.
29. Le Blanc, Paul. Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of Lenin (Pluto Press, London: 2008) pp. 31, 137–138.
30. Etzioni, Amitai. Ed., Public Intellectuals, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
31. Bauman, 1987: 2.
32. Furedi, 2004: 32.
33. Jennings and Kemp Welch, 1997: 1–2.
34. McLennan, 2004.
35. Jennings and Kemp-Welch, 1997.
36. Jennings and Kemp-Welch, 1997: 13.
37. Fuller, 2005: pp. 113–114.
38. Furedi (2004)
39. McKee (2001).
40. Bourdieu 1989.
41. Gattone 2007
42. Sorkin (2007)
43. Mills, 1959: 99.
44. Bender, T, 1993: 142.
45. Reason Magazine, "An Interview with Milton Friedman". December 1974
46. "The Intellectuals and Socialism", The University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949),
47. "Papers of Interest" (PDF). Mises Institute.
48. Albert Einstein (May 2009) [May 1949]. "Why Socialism? [1949]". Monthly Review. 61 (1). Retrieved 14 April 2010.
49. "Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media: Section 4: Scientists, Politics and Religion - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press". People-press.org. 9 July 2009. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
50. Johnson, Paul. "The Heartless Lovers of Humankind", The Wall Street Journal, 5 January 1987.
51. Bender, T, 1993: 12.
52. Bender, T, 1993: 3.
53. Zinman, Richard M.; Weinberger, Jerry; Melzer, Arthur M. (2004). The Public Intellectual: Between Philosophy and Politics. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-585-46322-3. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
54. Jennings and Kemp Welch, 1997.
55. Thatcher, 1993:753.
56. Collini, 2006: 127.
57. Nozick, Robert (January–February 1998). "Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?". Cato Policy Report. 20 (1): 1, 9–11.
58. Collini, 2006: 205.
59. Sowell, Thomas (2010). Intellectuals and Society, Basic Books ISBN 0-465-01948-X, pp. 218–276 passim.

Sources

• Aron, Raymond (1962) The Opium of the Intellectuals. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.
• Basov, Nikita et al. (2010). The Intellectual: A Phenomenon in Multidimensional Perspectives, Inter-Disciplinary Press.
• Bates, David, ed., (2007). Marxism, Intellectuals and Politics. London: Palgrave.
• Benchimol, Alex. (2016) Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period: Scottish Whigs, English Radicals and the Making of the British Public Sphere (London: Routledge).
• Benda, Julien (2003). The Treason of the Intellectuals. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.
• Bender, Thomas (1993). Intellect and Public Life. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Camp, Roderic (1985). Intellectuals and the State in Twentieth-Century Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Collini, Stefan (2006). Absent Minds: Intellectuals In Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Coleman, Peter (2010) The Last Intellectuals. Sydney: Quadrant Books.
• Di Leo, Jeffrey R., and Peter Hitchcock, eds. (2016) The New Public Intellectual: Politics, Theory, and the Public Sphere. (Springer).
• Finkielkraut, Alain (1995). The Defeat of the Mind. Columbia University Press.
• Furedi, Frank (2004). Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone? London and New York: Continuum Press.
• Fuller, Steve (2005). The Intellectual: The Positive Power of Negative Thinking. Cambridge: Icon.
• Gattone, Charles. F. (2006). The Social Scientist As Public Intellectual: Critical Reflections In A Changing World. USA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
• Gella, Aleksander, Ed., (1976). The Intelligentsia and the Intellectuals. California: Sage Publication.
• Gouldner, Alvin W. (1979). The Future of the Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. New York: The Seabury Press.
• Gross, John (1969). The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters. New York: Macmillan.
• Huszar, George B. de, ed., (1960). The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. Anthology with many contributors.
• Jennings, Jeremy and Kemp-Welch, Anthony, eds. (1997). Intellectuals in Politics: From the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie. London: Routledge.
• Johnson, Paul (1990). Intellectuals. New York: Harper Perennial ISBN 0-06-091657-5. Highly ideological criticisms of Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, Noam Chomsky, and others.
• Kennedy, Michael D. (2015). Globalizing knowledge: Intellectuals, universities and publics in transformation (Stanford University Press). 424pp online review.
• Konrad, George et al. (1979). The Intellectuals On The Road To Class Power. Sussex: Harvester Press.
• Kramer, Hilton (1999) The Twilight of the Intellectuals. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
• Lasch, Christopher (1997). The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
• Lemert, Charles (1991). Intellectuals and Politics. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.
• McCaughan, Michael (2000). True Crime: Rodolfo Walsh and the Role of the Intellectual in Latin American Politics. Latin America Bureau ISBN 1-899365-43-5.
• McLennan, Gregor (2004). "Traveling With Vehicular Ideas: The Case of the Third Way", Economy and Society. Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 484–499.
• Michael, John (2000). Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and Enlightenment Values. Duke University Press.
• Mills, C.W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press.
• Misztal, Barbara A. (2007). Intellectuals and the Public Good. Cambridge University Press.
• Molnar, Thomas (1961). The Decline of the Intellectual. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company.
• Piereson, James (2006). "The Rise & Fall of the Intellectual," The New Criterion, Vol. XXV, p. 52.
• Posner, Richard A. (2002). Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01246-1.
• Rieff, Philip, Ed., (1969). On Intellectuals. New York: Doubleday & Co.
• Sawyer, S., and Iain Stewart, eds. (2016) In Search of the Liberal Moment: Democracy, Anti-totalitarianism, and Intellectual Politics in France since 1950 (Springer).
• Showalter, Elaine (2001). Inventing Herself: Claiming A Feminist Intellectual Heritage. London: Picador.
• Sowell, Thomas (2009). Intellectuals and Society. New York: Perseus ISBN 978-0-465-01948-9.
• Thatcher, Margaret (1993). The Downing Street Years. London: HarperCollins ISBN 0-8317-5448-6.
• Viereck, Peter (1953). Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals. Boston: Beacon Press.

Further reading

• Aczél, Tamás & Méray, Tibor. (1959) The Revolt of the Mind. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.
• Barzun, Jacques (1959). The House of Intellect. New York: Harper.
• Berman, Paul (2010). The Flight of the Intellectuals. New York: Melville House.
• Carey, John (2005). The Intellectuals And The Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligensia, 1880–1939. Chicago Review Press.
• Chomsky, Noam (1968). "The Responsibility of Intellectuals." In: The Dissenting Academy, ed. Theolord Roszak. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 254–298.
• Grayling, A.C. (2013). "Do Public Intellectuals Matter?," Prospect Magazine, No. 206.
• Hamburger, Joseph (1966). Intellectuals in Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Hayek, F.A. (1949). "The Intellectuals and Socialism," The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. XVI, No. 3, pp. 417–433.
• Huizinga, Johan (1936). In the Shadows of Tomorrow. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
• Kidder, David S., Oppenheim, Noah D., (2006). The Intellectual Devotional. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Books ISBN 1-59486-513-2.
• Laruelle, François (2014). Intellectuals and Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Lilla, Mark (2003). The Reckless Mind – Intellectuals in Politics. New York: New York Review Books.
• Lukacs, John A. (1958). "Intellectuals, Catholics, and the Intellectual Life," Modern Age, Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 40–53.
• MacDonald, Heather (2001). The Burden of Bad Ideas. New York: Ivan R. Dee.
• Milosz, Czeslaw (1990). The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage Books.
• Molnar, Thomas (1958). "Intellectuals, Experts, and the Classless Society," Modern Age, Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 33–39.
• Moses, A. Dirk (2009) German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rothbard, Murray N. (1989). "World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals," The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. IX, No. 1, pp. 81–125.
• Sapiro, Gisèle. (2014). The French Writers' War 1940–1953 (1999; English edition 2014); highly influential study of intellectuals in the French Resistance online review.
• Shapiro, J. Salwyn (1920). "The Revolutionary Intellectual," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXXV, pp. 320–330.
• Shenfield, Arthur A. (1970). "The Ugly Intellectual," The Modern Age, Vol. XVI, No. 1, pp. 9–14.
• Shlapentokh, Vladimir (1990) Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Shore, Marci (2009). Caviar and Ashes. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Small, Helen (2002). The Public Intellectual. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Strunsky, Simeon (1921). "Intellectuals and Highbrows," Part II, Vanity Fair, Vol. XV, pp. 52, 92.
• Whittington-Egan, Richard (2003-08-01). "The Vanishing Man of Letters: Part One". Contemporary Review.
• Whittington-Egan, Richard (2003-10-01). "The Vanishing Man of Letters: Part Two". Contemporary Review.
• Wolin, Richard (2010). The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Culture Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

External links

• The Responsibility of Intellectuals, by Noam Chomsky, 23 February 1967.
• "Richard Posner's table of 600+ public intellectuals" (PDF). (105 KB) classified by profession, discipline, scholastic citations, media affiliation, number of web hits and sex.
• "Here's a Few You Missed", by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 2 July 2004.
• "The Optimist's Book Club", The New Haven Advocate—discussion of public intellectuals in the 21st century.