by MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI
Are public intellectuals in the 21st century an endangered species or a thriving new breed? Before we can sensibly ask whether public intellectuals are on the ascent, the decline, or something entirely different, we need to agree on what exactly, or even approximately, constitutes a public intellectual. It turns out that this isn’t a simple task and that the picture one gets from the literature on intellectualism depends largely on what sort of people one counts as “public intellectuals,” or, for that matter, what sort of activities count as intellectual to begin with. Nonetheless, some people (usually intellectuals) have actually spent a good deal of time thinking about such matters and have come up with some useful suggestions. For example, in Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species? Amitai Etzioni quotes the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet to the effect that intellectuals are people who devote themselves to “the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them.”1 Or perhaps one could go with the view of influential intellectual Edward Said, who said that intellectuals should “question patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial or gender privilege.”2
Should one feel less romantic (even a bit cynical, perhaps) about the whole idea, one might prefer instead Paul Johnson, who said that “a dozen people picked at random on the street are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligentsia.”3 Or go with David Carter, who wrote in the Australian Humanities Review that “public intellectuals might be defined as those who see a crisis where others see an event.”4
Skeptic for more
(Thanks to Salim Amersi)