With respect to the responsibility of intellectuals, there are still other, equally disturbing questions. Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth (...) lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the " responsibility of people," given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy. (shrink)

The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters' with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. The book discusses the role of intellectuals in the modern world. Bauman connects this with current analyses of modernity and post-modernity. The theme of the book is that the tasks of intellectuals (...) change from being 'legislators' to 'interpreters' with the transition from modernity to post-modernity. (shrink)

In this address to the president's plenary at the 2001 annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the author reflected on then recent international events and their possible implications for the research and teaching agendas of the social studies of science, technology, and medicine. He proposed the political engagement of science, technology, and society institutions and individual STS researchers while maintaining a strong commitment to the scholarly studies of science and technology. Drawing on the (...) work of René Gabriëls, the author elaborated a role for STS scholars as the new generation of “public intellectuals.”. (shrink)

Title: The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807841692 Author: Alan M. Wald Title: New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN: 0801836395 Author: Thomas Bender.

‘To declaim against present times and magnify the virtues of remote ancestors’, wrote David Hume in his Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ‘is a propensity almost inherent in human nature.’ In a...

ABSTRACTIn 1933, a number of European intellectuals among whom Paul Valéry, Johan Huizinga, Julien Benda, Hermann von Keyserling, met in Madrid and in Paris to discuss the identity and history of Europe under the initiative of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. During the symposia, the participants try to define a common European narrative beyond national differences, and some of them evoke the idea of a European ‘homeland’ or ‘nation’, as already advocated in those (...) years by Gaston Riou and Julien Benda. Salvador de Madariaga for example calls for a ‘European nationalism’; Georges Duhamel presents ‘Mother Europe’ as an opposing force to growing patriotism; Julio Dantas hopes for a ‘européenité’ as opposed to the individual ‘national’ feelings. What is the reason for insisting so repeatedly on those concepts, when trying to overcome the dangers of nationalism? This paper analyses the different formulations adopted by the participants in the symposiums to describe their idea of a European ‘nation/homeland’, and tries to identify the specific aspects and historical implications of these concepts. (shrink)

본 논문에서는 중국의 근대화 속에서 지식인들이 ‘근대’라는 자기정체성을 찾아가는 시대정신을 모색해보고자 한다. 그들의 세계관에서 근대화는 중국이 서양의 존재를 타자로 받아들이면서 자신을 주체로 새롭게 인식하는 과정이다. 그들은 기존의 전통적 사상과 서구의 사상 사이에 공존하는 괴리감을 어떻게 해소할 것인가 하는 현실적 문제를 고민하였다. 그들은 서구의 사회진화론을 수용하면서 부국강병과 민족생존과 같은 시대적 절박감과 역사적 사명감에 직면하였던 한편, 자유와 평등의 이념 하에서 반봉건주의적 진보성, 교화주의적 계몽성, 반제국주의적 애국심 등을 기치로 내걸으며 變法自强운동, 戊戌政變등을 추진하였다. 특히 강유위는 道義만을 명분으로 하는 봉건제도의 불합리성과 전통적 사고의 질곡을 비판하며 (...) 이른바 大同의 세계 혹은 太平의 경지를 지향하였다. 그의 大同三世論은 升平世의 단계에 있던 중국의 상황에서 사회진화론과 같은 필연적인 역사적 과정에서 이해될 수 있다. 여기에는 전통의 重建과 근대의 轉換의 이중적인 과제가 있다. 전통의 重建이 민족주의의 함양과 관련된다면 근대의 轉換은 국가주의의 고양과 관련된다. 지식인들은 天下의 大同사회의 공동체적 차원에서 민족생존의 민족주의와 국민의식의 국가주의를 추구하였다. 그들은 문명화된 세계에 중국을 끊임없이 새롭게 투사하면서 구국적 애국심과 주체적 민권의식을 발판으로 하여 근대적 국가의 조감도를 그려내고자 하였다. 이러한 근대적 사고는 經世致用의 기조 속에 大同의 민족주의와 文明의 보편주의에 관한 담론을 낳았으며 더 나아가 구미의 열강들과 어깨를 나란히 하려는 中華主義의 극단적 민족주의로 치닫게 하였다. (shrink)

(2003). Introduction: ideas, intellectuals and the public. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 6, The Public Role of Intellectuals, pp. 1-7. doi: 10.1080/1369823042000241221.

The purpose of the study is to substantiate the socio-cultural contexts of the leading role of knowledge in the transformation of power and managerial relations in the knowledge society. The article analyzes the nature of the intellectual overstraat – a new power and management structure that is being formed in the conditions of the Knowledge Society, and identifies the socio-cultural prerequisites for the formation of this phenomenon. New spheres of cultural life, new social strata and strata, as shown in the (...) study, were the result of a" shift", a" shift " of power from the economy to knowledge. The "shift" in the structures of power and management undermines the traditional bureaucratic foundations. The overstraat of intellectuals is presented as embodying the power of knowledge. As a result, the functions of the intellectual overstrate in a knowledge - based society-social, economic, political and state-are identified and analyzed; the socio-cultural context of the leading role of knowledge in the transformation of power and managerial relations of the "Knowledge Society"is substantiated. (shrink)

Taves: Let us begin with the claim that universities are deadly to serious intellectual work. The university ethos fosters mediocrity, boredom and gutlessness. It has become a haven for conformist intellectuals who value patronage and status over intellectual quality and challenge. “Radical” academics are no exception; they too have bought into hyperspecialization, empiricism, professionalization, abstract theory, and have become marginal, predictable and politically irrelevant. If such is the case, what are the implications? Siegel: There is certainly a sense of (...) pervasive malaise on campus. Everyone seems to agree that there is an institutional and intellectual crisis of the disciplines. (shrink)

Kenneth Kai-chung Yung’s Chinese Émigré Intellectuals and Their Quest for Liberal Values in the Cold War presents the philosophical and political development of Chinese intellectuals who fled the mainland after the Communist takeover in 1949. Focusing on Yin Haiguang 殷海光, Zhang Junmai 張君勱, and Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, the author provides a comparative account and comprehensive overview of the many facets of intellectual discourse among Chinese post-war philosophers and public intellectuals.Yung’s book is structured into five chapters. While the (...) first two chapters introduce the reader to the general trends and historical circumstances of the post-war intellectual sphere, the ensuing chapters... (shrink)

This article argues that the dominant role played by intellectuals in East Central Europe was motivated by a deeply felt Enlightenment missionary belief. This establishes affinities between them and the ancient Sophists, and the ambivalence of such a position is illustrated through the case of Georg Lukács. As examples of philosophers in the classical sense of the term, the article provides four short portraits: the Czech Jan Patoc ka, who argued that Europe as a culture is rooted in the (...) care of the soul; the Hungarian one-time friends Károly Kerényi and Béla Hamvas, and the Polish bishop-philosopher Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II. The central thrust of the argument is that while Western thought is increasingly trapped in an ever more desperately radicalized critique of metaphysics, in East Central Europe – ironically, to a large extent in the footsteps of Nietzsche – the most important intellectual figures have sparked a return to metaphysics. (shrink)

From Kosovo to Québec, Ireland to East Timor, nationalism has been a recurrent topic of intense debate. It has been condemned as a source of hatred and war, yet embraced for stimulating community feeling and collective freedom. Joan Cocks explores the power, danger, and allure of nationalism by examining its place in the thought of eight politically engaged intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the antagonist of capital, Karl Marx; the critics of imperialism Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and (...) Frantz Fanon; the liberal pluralist Isaiah Berlin; the neonationalist Tom Nairn, and the post-colonial writers, V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said. Cocks not only sheds new light on the complexities of nationalism but also reveals the tensions that have inspired and troubled intellectuals who have sought to lead lives between detached criticism and political passion.In lively, conversational prose, Cocks assesses their treatment of questions such as the mythology of national identity, the right to national self-determination, and the morality of nationalist violence. While ultimately critical of nationalism, she engages sympathetically even with its defenders. By illuminating the links that distinguished minds have drawn between thought and action on nationalism in politics, this stimulating work provides a rich foundation from which we ourselves might think or act more wisely when confronting a phenomenon that, in fundamental and perplexing ways, has shaped our world. (shrink)

In this classic volume, written at the height of the Cold War, with a new preface of 2006, Peter Viereck, one of the foremost intellectual spokesmen of modern conservatism, examines the differing responses of American and European intellectuals to the twin threats of Nazism and Soviet communism. In so doing, he seeks to formulate a humanistic conservatism with which to counter the danger of totalitarian thought in the areas of politics, ethics, and art. The glory of the intellectuals (...) was the firm moral stance they took against Nazism at a time when appeasement was the preferred path of many politicians; their shame lay in their failure to recognize the brutality of Stalinism to the extent of becoming apologists for or accomplices of its tyranny. In Viereck's view, this failure is rooted in an abandonment of humane values that he sees as a legacy of nineteenth-century romanticism and certain strands of modernist thought and aesthetics. Among his targets are literary obscurantism as personified by Ezra Pound, the academicization of literary culture, the rigidity of adversarial avant-gardism, and the failure of many writers and cultural institutions to conserve the very heritage their political freedom and security depend on. Viereck represents their attitude in a series of satirical dialogues with Gaylord Babbitt, son of Sinclair Lewis' embodiment of conservative philistinism. Babbitt Junior is as unreflective as his father, but the objects of his credulity are the received ideas of liberal progressivism and avant-garde mandarinism. Ultimately, Viereck's critique stands as a timely rebuke to the extremism of both left and right. (shrink)

This article explores the problem of the political responsibilities of intellectuals and philosophers through an appraisal of Michael Walzer's work on the idea of “connected criticism.” The author elaborates the main elements of this theory, shows how it approaches various thinkers, like Herbert Marcuse and Jean-Paul Sartre, and shows where it fits into American intellectual life, particularly the intellectual history of Dissent Magazine and the democratic Left. Walzer's idea of a connected social critic contrasts to Sartre's idea of an (...) “engaged critic.” The article also examines Walzer's theory in light of some of the arguments made by “commonsense” moral philosophy, such as those of Irving Howe, John Rawls, Theodor Adorno, and Leo Strauss. Cohen defines Walzer's theory as part of a social democratic approach that also can serve in part as an antidote to intellectual hubris. Finally, this article presents a critique of Edward Said's understanding of intellectuals in his Representations of the Intellectual. The author argues that Said's book misrepresents Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons. Cohen suggests that there are radical differences between Said's description of this novel's central character, Bazarov, and the world in which he lives, and those created by Turgenev. Said's approach is evaluated in relation to the notion of connected criticism and some criticisms of connected criticism are offered. (shrink)

In Capitalism and the Jews, Jerry Z. Muller attempts to resolve Milton Friedman's paradox: Why is it that Jewish intellectuals have been so hostile to capitalism even though capitalism has so greatly benefited the Jews? In one chapter Muller answers, in effect, that Jewish intellectuals have not been anticapitalist. Elsewhere, however, Muller implicitly explains the leftist tendencies of most intellectuals—Jewish and gentile—by unspooling the anticapitalist thread in the main lines of Western thought, culminating in Marx but by (...) no means ending with him. Thus, Milton Friedman saw a paradox where none existed. This may have been because Friedman was an economist, and economics is the one strand of Western thought that is, by and large, procapitalist. To an economist, opposition to capitalism may be paradoxical; to noneconomists, economics is alienating in its form and in its content. There is thus no mystery as to why intellectuals, including Jewish intellectuals, tend to shun economics and therefore gravitate to the left. (shrink)

In Capitalism and the Jews, Jerry Z. Muller attempts to resolve Milton Friedman's paradox: Why is it that Jewish intellectuals have been so hostile to capitalism even though capitalism has so greatly benefited the Jews? In one chapter Muller answers, in effect, that Jewish intellectuals have not been anticapitalist. Elsewhere, however, Muller implicitly explains the leftist tendencies of most intellectuals—Jewish and gentile—by unspooling the anticapitalist thread in the main lines of Western thought, culminating in Marx but by (...) no means ending with him. Thus, Milton Friedman saw a paradox where none existed. This may have been because Friedman was an economist, and economics is the one strand of Western thought that is, by and large, procapitalist. To an economist, opposition to capitalism may be paradoxical; to noneconomists, economics is alienating in its form and in its content. There is thus no mystery as to why intellectuals, including Jewish intellectuals, tend to shun economics and therefore gravitate to the left. (shrink)