Intellectual

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.

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 In the 20th century, such an approach was gradually superseded by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused, replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual person.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]

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.

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]

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]

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.

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. 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.

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]

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.

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]