INTELLECTUALS

The word intellectual used as a noun to describe a particular group of people has its origin in the early nineteenth century (around 1813), but as a description of how writers, philosophers, and scientists acted in the realm of politics it dates from the late nineteenth century in France. As Jürgen Habermas has argued, intellectuals were the representatives of an emergent public sphere. French philosophes in the salons, German philosophers in reading societies, and English writers in coffeehouses came together in a social space in order to participate, as independent critical thinkers, in the open and free discussion of issues of cultural and political interest. This rising group was the product of a new capitalist market economy that was progressively freeing the producers of ideas from the twin authorities of state and church. With the growth of the book trade and the expansion of the popular press, themselves the product of a growth of the reading public, writers and their like were able to establish a previously unknown level of autonomy.

From the seventeenth century onward a variety of different terms (including les savants, les érudits, les gens de lettres, as well as the hostile les pédants) were coined to describe this new group of people brought to the fore by a combination of technological revolution and the emergence of modern state power. As the locations in which knowledge was exchanged became increasingly diverse, the activity of producing knowledge became increasingly specialized, producing in its turn the newly defined vocation of the author. Perhaps no figure better represented this novel form than Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778). Voltaire, the philosophe, committed himself to the battle for ideas and did so in opposition to those prepared to abuse power, be it secular or religious. He established the cause to which the intellectual was to be committed (the fight against injustice) as well as the methods that were to be used (argument, scorn, publicity) and did so in the belief that the philosophe had an over-riding obligation to speak the truth, whatever the personal consequences. Moreover, it came to be believed that men such as Voltaire had the power to change the course of history and to bring governments to their knees. It was for this reason that many were later to conclude that the philosophes had caused the French Revolution. Although this is an exaggeration, it is possible to trace a line of descent that runs from Voltaire in the eighteenth century to Victor Hugo (1802–1885) and Émile Zola (1840–1902) in the nineteenth century and Albert Camus (1913–1960) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) in the twentieth century. Each adopted the pose of what was later to be portrayed as that of the universal, committed intellectual.

Nevertheless, the role played by intellectuals and the extent of their autonomy varied considerably from country to country. In part this depended upon the formal liberties accorded by the state to forms of cultural expression. It reflected the extent to which intellectuals controlled their own publishing houses and magazines. Religion too played a part, with societies dominated by the Protestant, Catholic, or Muslim religions displaying markedly different levels of toleration toward the free expression of ideas. The relative prominence of one or more cultural centers within a society also had an impact, as did the importance and size of the university sector and the level of linguistic uniformity across a society.

If in Spain and Italy, for example, intellectuals have occupied a position similar to that of their French counterparts, there have been other countries (most notably Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries) where they have been relatively invisible. In England, by contrast, intellectuals have predominantly been absorbed into the ruling elite and have largely endorsed the dominant values of society. In America, intellectuals have struggled to be heard against a backdrop of anti-intellectualism and popular culture but even so there were those who managed to carve out a bohemian existence (most notably in New York). One characteristic however seems to be true in all cases: women were largely excluded from the category of intellectual.

Two specific examples might be examined in greater detail. It was in nineteenth-century Russia that the term intelligentsia came into common usage. Initially drawn almost exclusively from the nobility, its world was highly circumscribed, encompassing little more than the universities, aristocratic salons, and marginal reviews and periodicals. Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) spoke of an intelligentsia that enjoyed outer slavery and inner freedom. By midcentury the nature of the intelligentsia was changing as a consequence of a decline in aristocratic lifestyles and the growth of the modern professions. It was this new generation (the "sons" of Ivan Turgenev's [1818–1883] famous novel Fathers and Sons [1862]) who in the 1860s first started sporadic and mainly clandestine organizations designed to propagandize the vast masses of Russia's peasantry and to explain to them the nature of their exploitation. Idealizing the "people" and believing in their natural propensity toward socialism, this generation asserted the duty of intellectuals to bring about the extinction of the existing society. As Russia changed at the turn of the century, the next generation entered the world of revolutionary politics. Yet Vladimir Lenin's (1870–1924) Bolshevik Party was always suspicious of the intelligentsia and with the emergence of the Soviet regime set out to transform the intelligentsia into a salaried and integrated element of the state. In this it was largely successful.

It was however in the France of the Third Republic that the various factors favorable to the emergence of intellectuals as a distinct group produced the first full expression of what has come to be understood as the political intervention of intellectuals as autonomous actors. There the Republic had explicitly sought to produce a secular elite that could counterbalance the reactionary influence of the Catholic Church. In consequence, when the forces of reaction sought unjustly to imprison Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) on false charges of treason, writers including Zola, Anatole France (1844–1924), and Marcel Proust (1871–1922) intervened in the name of truth and justice in order to secure his release. They did so explicitly as intellectuals, speaking in the name of an authority that derived solely from their literary, cultural, and scientific activities, and it was in the name of that authority that they were listened to.

From the outset the term intellectual was deployed by political opponents as a term of abuse, indicating a group of uprooted and classless individuals who spoke about things they did not understand and with doleful consequences. "I have never called myself an intellectual," proclaimed the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), "and no one has ever dared call me one in my presence. I think that an intellectual may be defined as a person who pretends to have more intellect than he has, and I hope that this does not apply to me." These criticisms were often tinged with overt anti-Semitism. Yet the intervention at the turn of the twentieth century in defense of Dreyfus established an ideal type of what an intellectual should be and it has been an image that has had considerable currency until the present day (most notably in the writings of Edward Said [1935–2003]).

Yet the role of intellectuals was never a subject of agreement, especially so in the years of their emergence. The sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) conjured up the image of the "freefloating" intellectual, of someone who was "unanchored" and "unattached" and who therefore could be said to act independently of the claims of false ideology and self-interest. Julien Benda (1867–1956) gave this vision its clearest and best-known expression in his text La Trahison des clercs (1927; Treason of the intellectuals). Faced with the rise of both fascism and communism, Benda produced a passionate portrayal of the intellectual, locked in the ivory tower of reflection, who remained above the day-to-day world of political realities and compromise. The primary function of the intellectual was to place the values of knowledge before the values of action.

Several questions arose in relation to this picture of the autonomous intellectual. Was it an accurate portrayal of the role of intellectuals? Was autonomy the desirable goal it is taken to be? The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) did not think so, preferring rather to praise the "organic" intellectual prepared to subordinate his or her efforts to the twin causes of the working class and the Communist Party. Paul Nizan (1905–1940) articulated the same theme in his blistering response to Benda's call for independence. To abstain from politics, Nizan countered, was to make a choice, and thus to side with the forces of capitalism and imperialism. After World War II this position attained almost the status of orthodoxy, receiving its clearest statement in the doctrine of commitment articulated by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986). Max Weber (1864–1920) provided the most compelling reply to these arguments in two essays published in 1919. Weber argued that the vocation of politics demands a particular form of responsibility that is not appropriate in the world of scholarship. As such the scholar should aspire to maintain as high a level of impartiality as possible and to accept "value freedom" as a desirable and attainable goal. Later Raymond Aron (1905–1983), condemning what he termed "the opium of the intellectuals," reworked Max Weber's distinction between an "ethic of principled conviction" and an "ethic of responsibility" in order to expose the blindness of intellectuals toward the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and to argue that intellectuals should adopt a more modest function.

See alsoIntelligentsia; Professions.

bibliography

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Jeremy Jennings