260. What is an intellectual?

In item 218 of this blog I used a definition of the intellectual from Foucault[i]: ‘The person who uses his knowledge, his competence, and his relation to truth in the field of political struggles’. Elsewhere, I found a similar definition[ii]: ‘… engagement in public life, in the service of a cause that divides politicians, elites and simple citizens’.

The paradigmatic case is that of Emile Zola, with his ‘I accuse’, in the upheaval in France with the affair Dreyfus. Another is that of Sartre. The notion of a public intellectual seems especially French.

This leaves room for a wide variety of intellectuals[iii]: of the left, the right, progressive and conservative, of humanism (Thomas Mann was mentioned, but there was doubt whether he might be too a-political), and even of Nazism (Heidegger). Some defend universal values, such as freedom (Sartre), while others (Foucault) militate against universals in defence of particulars. One may even be an intellectual at arms against any hegemony of intellectuals.

While Foucault pleaded for the intellectual as an expert in some area, Sartre proposed that the intellectual begins where the ‘technician of practical knowledge ends’.[iv]

An important feature is independence, if not autonomy. In item 218 I discussed how difficult it may be to maintain it.

Connected to that, and connecting with Bergson and Derrida, as in preceding items of this blog, I add what I think is a central feature: the intellectual is engaged in Bergsonian ‘duration’ and Derridadaist ‘deconstruction’. This elaborates on the idea that the mission of the intellectual is to break dogma and shift established, taken for granted beliefs or perspectives.

Even deconstruction may be deconstructed. As I argued in item 251, the change, transformation involved in duration and deconstruction cannot be without pause. Some stability is required, and it is part of the task of intellectuals to bring it about, in diffusing, explaining and defending perspectives.

Max Weber distinguished between a ‘morality of conviction’ and a ‘morality of responsibility’. The first may be obvious, but is the latter a requirement for an intellectual? And is the criterion for responsibility then feasibility of the views expressed? I am inclined towards responsibility, but I grant that feasibility may lock one up in the status quo. 

While feasibility and stability may be virtues, it is a challenge not to be co-opted in dominant perspectives, as I argued in item 218. The intellectual must have the courage to maintain independence even at the cost of being ignored, ostracized or persecuted. That is easier said than done. Nazism denounced intellectuals as enemies of the state, forcing them to either conform (Heidegger) or to emigrate, either in reality or virtually, in ‘inner emigration’.

But often, in liberal democracies the price intellectuals pay is bearable, with a little courage. It can help to congregate in societies of their own. Yet, one may ask how many exercise such criticism, at universities, academies of science, and editorships of scholarly journals. 

To use other terminology from Foucault: the intellectual engages in parrhêsia, or should do so, taking risks in engagement, being committed rather than maintaining the aloofness of a philosopher, teacher or scientist. The art of it then is to nevertheless maintain the telling of truth, or the search for truth, in the form of warranted assertibility, and not fall into rhetoric to mould assent.    

---

[i] In an interview on ‘Truth and power’ in 1976, reprinted in James D. Faubion (ed.), Essential works of Foucault 1954-1984, volume 3, Power, The New Press, 2000.

[ii] Michel Trebitsch & Marie-Chistine Granjon (eds.), Pour une histoire comparée des intellectuels, Editions Complexe, 1998.

[iii] Also from Trebitsch & Granjon

[iv] Jean-Paul Sartre, Plaidoyer pour les intellectuels, a lecture given in Tokio in 1965.