A strict definition of intellectuals would be that they are persons whose role is to deal with the advancement and propagation of knowledge, and with the articulation of the values of their particular society. In that sense all societies have their intellectuals, since even the most so-called primitive will maintain priests or other interpreters of the divine will and natural order. For most of history, intellectuals have of necessity been supported by the political and religious institutions of their societies, so that rebels against accepted institutions and mores have tended to be critical of what they regarded as the over-intellectual approach of the recognized teachers of their time.
The role of intellectuals was altered in major respects by the advent of printing, and consequently of a public for a wide variety of reading matter including freer discussion of basic problems in science, morals, politics and even religion. The French philosophes of the eighteenth century, later to be saddled by some historians with responsibility for the advent of the great Revolution, gave a precedent for the modern idea that intellectuals stand somehow outside the power structure and are, by definition, critical of existing social arrangements.
In the nineteenth century, the concept and its resonance differed in different societies. In France and the other advanced countries of western Europe, intellectuals were distinguished from scientists and scholars who depended upon institutions and academies funded by the state, and from those practitioners of literature whose appeal was strictly aesthetic. To be an intellectual was to claim a degree of independence of outlook; and the word in general parlance implied respect and approval. In central Europe, where the state was more suspicious of radical ideas, intellectuals, while courted by the political parties, were looked upon with suspicion by the authorities especially if they were recruited largely from minority groups. Nationalist (and later fascist) movements appealed to populist anti-intellectual prejudice against the Jewish intellectuals of Vienna at the turn of the century, and in the German Weimar Republic.
Britain differed from its neighbours in that, although there were eminent social critics in the Victorian age, the interaction between the world of the intellect and the political and administrative worlds was very close. Intellectuals could preach reform and hope to have an influence. For this reason the word intellectuals was held to represent a foreign rather than a British reality and was given a slightly scornful edge, as implying a lack of contact with everyday life. Few British people would have wished or would now wish to be called intellectuals. In the USA the similar role of intellectuals was diminished after their triumph in the success of the anti-slavery movement. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a new movement of radical social criticism did develop among what can be seen as the American equivalent of European intellectuals, and this was renewed after the First World War and Woodrow Wilson’s temporary mobilization of some of them in pursuit of his domestic and international ideals. So great was their alienation in this second phase that they became susceptible to Communist penetration and influence to a greater extent than was common in Europe in the 1930s, although Marxism was to enjoy an efflorescence in liberated Europe after the Second World War, notably in the Latin countries.
In tsarist Russia the differentiation between intellectuals and the members of learned professions was narrower, and they were grouped together as members of the intelligentsia. Faced with an absolutist regime, to be a member of the intelligentsia was almost by definition to be a critic of the social order and an opponent of the regime, although on occasion from a right-wing rather than a left-wing angle. In the former Soviet Union, and subsequently in eastern Europe as well, the monopoly of the communist party in defining and expounding the ruling doctrine, and the monopoly of state and party in access to the media, forced intellectuals seeking to follow their own bent to go underground so that, as under tsarism, to be intellectual is to be classed as an opponent of regimes whose instruments of repression are greater and used with less scruple than those of earlier times.
In the overseas European empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a class of intellectuals influenced by their western-style education came into being alongside the more traditionally educated and motivated intellectuals of the indigenous tradition. The ideas to which they were exposed, combined with the limited roles available to them, produced a similar effect to that noted in relation to tsarist Russia, predisposing them towards political opposition. Another similarity was the extension of the concept to include more than the small minority who were full-time intellectuals in the western sense. What was created was again an intelligentsia. This important aspect of the prelude to independence of the countries of the so-called Third World has had strong repercussions. Ingrained habits of criticism and opposition proved difficult to discard when these intelligentsias took power. Intellectuals, when called upon to rule, rarely perform well and usually have to give way to more disciplined elements such as the military.
A reaction against the adoption of western values and attitudes by intellectuals in Third-World countries has produced a revival of a traditional, largely religious-oriented leadership, notably in parts of the Islamic world, and a specific repudiation of intellectuals thought to be tarnished by western liberal or Marxist contacts.
Intellectuals whose mission is to examine everything are naturally prone to examine their own roles. This self-consciousness has been heightened by the anti-intellectualism of some populist movements, an anti-intellectualism which has surfaced more than once on the American political scene. There are a number of recurring problems for intellectuals generally. Should they seek solitude to produce and develop their own ideas, or does the notion itself imply a constant commerce between intellectuals such as took place in the salons of eighteenth-century Paris and Regency London, or later in the cafés of Paris and Vienna, or as it now takes place in the many international congresses and seminars supported by American foundations? Should intellectuals engage directly in current controversies or content themselves with publishing their own ideas, leaving the arena to others? Should they accept public office or even seek the suffrages of the people for themselves? Should philosophers be kings?
Max Beloff
University of Buckingham
Further reading
Beloff, M. (1970) The Intellectual in Politics and Other Essays, London.
Benda, J. (1927) La Trahison des Clercs, Paris.
Hofstadter, R. (1963) Anti-intellectualism in American Life, New York.
Joll, J. (1969) Three Intellectuals in Politics, London.
Lasch, C. (1966) The New Radicalism in America: The Intellectual as a Social Type, New York.
Shils, E. (1972) The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays, Chicago.
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