Intellectual

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Erasmus of Rotterdam
was one of the foremost intellectuals of his time.
Foreign Policy magazine named the lawyer Shirin Ebadi a leading intellectual for her work protecting human rights in Iran.[1]

An intellectual is a person who engages in

normative problems.[2][3] Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by either rejecting, producing or extending an ideology, and by defending a system of values.[4]

Etymological background

"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".[5][6] A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society in a time when literacy was rare. 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.

In the late 19th century, when literacy was relatively common in European countries such as the United Kingdom, the "Man of Letters" (littérateur)[7] 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. Examples include Samuel Johnson, Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle. In the 20th century, such an approach was gradually superseded by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused, replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual person. The archaic term is the basis of the names of several academic institutions which call themselves Colleges of Letters and Science.

"Intellectual"

The earliest record of the English noun "intellectual" is found in the 19th century, where in 1813,

Byron reports that 'I wish I may be well enough to listen to these intellectuals'.[8]: 18  Over the course of the 19th century, other variants of the already established adjective 'intellectual' as a noun appeared in English and in French, where in the 1890s the noun (intellectuels) formed from the adjective intellectuel appeared with higher frequency in the literature.[8]
: 20  Collini writes about this time that "[a]mong this cluster of linguistic experiments there occurred ... the occasional usage of 'intellectuals' as a plural noun to refer, usually with a figurative or ironic intent, to a collection of people who might be identified in terms of their intellectual inclinations or pretensions."[8]: 20 

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–1870s), who were the status class of white-collar workers. For Germany, 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".[9]: 53  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.[citation needed]

J'Accuse…! asking the French President Félix Faure to resolve the Dreyfus affair
.

In France, the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), an identity crisis of antisemitic nationalism for the French Third Republic (1870–1940), 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 initially derogatory, usage; its French noun usage is attributed to Georges Clemenceau in 1898. Nevertheless, by 1930 the term "intellectual" passed from its earlier pejorative associations and restricted usages to a widely accepted term and it was because of the Dreyfus Affair that the term also acquired generally accepted use in English.[8]: 21 

In the 20th century, the term intellectual acquired positive connotations of

demagoguery, paternalism and incivility (condescension).[10]: 169  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.[11][page needed
]

According to Thomas Sowell, as a descriptive term of person, personality, and profession, the word intellectual identifies three traits:

  1. Educated; erudition for developing theories;
  2. Productive; creates cultural capital in the fields of philosophy, literary criticism, and sociology, law, medicine, and science, etc.; and
  3. Artistic; creates art in literature, music, painting, sculpture, etc.[12][page needed]

Historical uses

In

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

The word intellectual is found in Indian scripture Mahabharata in the Bachelorette meeting (Swayamvara Sava) of Draupadi. Immediately after Arjuna and Raja-Maharaja (kings-emperors) came to the meeting, Nipuna Buddhijibina (perfect intellectuals) appeared at the meeting.[citation needed]

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 were often also skilled calligraphers or Confucian
philosophers. 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.[13]: 22 

In

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.[14]
: 73–4 

Public intellectual

External videos
video icon "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

taste of the time".[16][11]: 32  In Representations of the Intellectual (1994), Edward Saïd said that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society".[17]: 1–2  Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a society; although the North American usage of the term intellectual includes the university academics.[18] The difference between intellectual and academic is participation in the realm of public affairs.[19]

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".[20]: 51 

An intellectual usually is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy.[21][page needed] 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.[17]: 13 

Public engagement

The determining factor for a "thinker" (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist) to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which the individual is implicated and engaged with the vital reality of the contemporary world, i.e. 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.[citation needed]

After the failure of the large-scale

Tiananmen Square Massacre from the "universal intellectual" (who plans better futures from within academia) to minjian ("grassroots") intellectuals, the latter group represented by such figures as Wang Xiaobo, social scientist Yu Jianrong, and Yanhuang Chunqiu editor Ding Dong (丁東).[22]

Public policy

In the matters of

military dictatorship of 1973–1990, 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.[24]

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".[25]: 99  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 know "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society".[25][page needed] Likewise, Richard Rorty criticized the quality of participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of intellect, especially academic intellect".[26]: 142 

External videos
video icon Booknotes interview with Posner on Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline, June 2, 2002,
values or public philosophy, or public ethics, or public theology
, nor with matters of moral and spiritual outrage.

Intellectual status class

Socially, intellectuals constitute the intelligentsia, a status class organised either by ideology (e.g., conservatism, fascism, socialism, liberal, reactionary, revolutionary, democratic, communism), or by nationality (American intellectuals, French intellectuals, Ibero–American intellectuals, et al.). The term intelligentsiya originated from Tsarist Russia (c. 1860s–1870s), where it denotes the social stratum of those possessing intellectual formation (schooling, education), and who were Russian society's counterpart to the German Bildungsbürgertum and to the French bourgeoisie éclairée, the enlightened middle classes of those realms.[10]: 169–71 

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: providing advice and counsel to the political leaders, interpreting the country's politics to the mass of the population (urban workers and peasants). 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.[27]: 31, 137–8 

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.

The Italian communist theoretician

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.

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.[28]: 119 

The British historian

logical fallacy, ideological stupidity, and poor planning hampered by ideology.[17] In her memoirs, the Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher wrote 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".[29]
: 753 

Latin America

The American academic

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
. [30]

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. [31]: 113–4 

United States

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

The 19th-century U.S. 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".[26]: 12  In his view, it was necessary for the sake of social, economic and political stability "to separate the serious, technical role of professionals from their responsibility [for] supplying usable philosophies for the general public". This expresses a dichotomy, derived from Plato, between public knowledge and private knowledge, "civic culture" and "professional culture", the intellectual sphere of life and the life of ordinary people in society.[26]: 12 

In the United States, members of the intellectual status class have been

leftist political perspectives about guns-or-butter fiscal policy.[32]

In "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1949), Friedrich Hayek wrote that "journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists" form an intellectual social class whose function is to communicate the complex and specialized knowledge of the scientist to the general public. He argued that intellectuals were attracted to socialism or 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.[33] According to Hayek, intellectuals disproportionately support socialism for idealistic and utopian reasons that cannot be realized in practice.[34]

Persecution of intellectuals

Totalitarian governments manipulate and apply anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. Intellectuals were targeted by the Nazis, the communist regime in China, in communist Romania by the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) and the Securitate, the Khmer Rouge, and in conflicts in Bangladesh, the former Yugoslavia, and Poland.[citation needed]

Criticism

The economist Milton Friedman identified the intelligentsia and the business class as interfering with capitalism.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted that "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).[35]: 588–9 

pseudo-scientific justification for the crimes of the state
.

In "An Interview with Milton Friedman" (1974), the American economist

businessmen and intellectuals are enemies of capitalism: most intellectuals believed in socialism while businessmen expected economic privileges. 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 superior intellectual work, much rewarded at school and at university, are undervalued and underpaid in the capitalist market economy. Thus, intellectuals turn against capitalism despite enjoying more socioeconomic status than the average person.[37]

The economist

: 218–276 

References

  1. ^ Amburn, Brad (2009). "The World's Top 20 Public Intellectuals". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  2. ^ The New Fontana dictionary of Modern Thought Third Edition, A. Bullock & S. Trombley, Eds. (1999) p. 433.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Ory, Pascal and Sirinelli, Jean-François. 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.
  5. ^ The Oxford English Reference Dictionary Second Edition, (1996) p. 130.
  6. ^ The New Cassel's French–English, English–French Dictionary (1962) p. 88.
  7. ^ "Littérateur, n.". Discover the Story of English (Second (1989) ed.). Oxford English Dictionary. June 2012 [First published in New English Dictionary, 1903].
  8. ^ .
  9. ^ Kramer, Hilton (1999). The Twilight of the Intellectuals. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
  10. ^ a b Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1983)
  11. ^ a b Furedi, Frank (2004). Where Have All The Intellectuals Gone?. London and New York: Continuum Press.
  12. ^ Sowell, Thomas (1980). Knowledge and Decisions. Basic Books.
  13. .
  14. .
  15. ^ Etzioni, Amitai. Ed., Public Intellectuals, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
  16. ^ Bauman, 1987: 2.
  17. ^ .
  18. ^ McKee (2001)
  19. ^ Bourdieu 1989
  20. ^ 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, NY, 1969
  21. S2CID 145227353
    .
  22. .
  23. ^ Gattone, Charles (2006). The Social Scientist As Public Intellectual: Critical Reflections In A Changing World. Rowman and Littlefield.
  24. ^ Sorkin (2007)
  25. ^ a b Mills, Charles Wright (1959). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  26. ^ a b c Bender, Thomas (1993). Intellect and Public Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  27. ^ Le Blanc, Paul. Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of Lenin (Pluto Press, London: 2008)
  28. ^ Scriven 1993
  29. .
  30. ^ Smith, Peter H. (2017). A view from Latin America. The New History.
  31. ^ Fuller, Steve (2005). The Intellectual: The Positive Power of Negative Thinking. Cambridge: Icon.
  32. ^ "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.
  33. ^ "The Intellectuals and Socialism", The University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949)
  34. ^ "Papers of Interest" (PDF). Mises Institute. 18 August 2014.
  35. ^ Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre, Gallimard, 1989
  36. .
  37. ^ Nozick, Robert (January–February 1998). "Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?". Cato Policy Report. 20 (1): 1, 9–11.
  38. ^ Sowell, Thomas (2010). Intellectuals and Society. Basic Books.

Bibliography

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 Intelligentsia, 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). .
  • 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