Public Intellectual

A Public Intellectual is an intellectual who is a public figure.

• Example(s):
  • Socrates.
  • John Stuart Mill.
  • Jean Paul Sartre.
  • Noam Chomsky.
  • Daniel Dennett.
  • Steven Pinker.
  • Sam Harris.
  • Yuval Noah Harari.
  • ...
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Political Figure.
  • a Spiritual Leader.
• See: Pascal Ory, Critical Thinking, Research, Human Self-Reflection, Public Intellectualism.

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References

2023

• (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual#Public_intellectual Retrieved:2023-8-29.
  • The term public intellectual describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs discourse of society, in addition to an academic career. Regardless of their academic field or the professional expertise, the public intellectual addresses and responds to the normative problems of society, and, as such, is expected to be an impartial critic who can "rise above the partial preoccupation of one's own profession—and engage with the global issues of truth, judgment, and taste of the time". In Representations of the Intellectual (1994), Edward Saïd said that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society". Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a society; although the North American usage of the term intellectual includes the university academics. The difference between intellectual and academic is participation in the realm of public affairs. Jürgen Habermas' Structural Transformation of Public Sphere (1963) made significant contribution to the notion of public intellectual by historically and conceptually delineating the idea of private and public. Controversial, in the same year, was Ralf Dahrendorf's definition: "As the court-jesters of modern society, all intellectuals have the duty to doubt everything that is obvious, to make relative all authority, to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask". An intellectual usually is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy. The Czech intellectual Václav Havel said that politics and intellectuals can be linked, but that moral responsibility for the intellectual's ideas, even when advocated by a politician, remains with the intellectual. Therefore, it is best to avoid utopian intellectuals who offer 'universal insights' to resolve the problems of political economy with public policies that might harm and that have harmed civil society; that intellectuals be mindful of the social and cultural ties created with their words, insights and ideas; and should be heard as social critics of politics and power.

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