Critical Approaches to Current Ideas on the Intellectual

Abstract

I have in the past dealt extensively with the subject of the intellectual in my discussion of the issue of the intellectual and revolution. This forced me to return to prevailing conceptions about the intellectual, particularly how intellectuals differ from experts and the educated. This is consistent with the positive conception of the intellectual in the French tradition since Emile Zola’s J’accuse . It deals with the intellectual as an authority of conscience who does not derive legitimacy from social status based only on academic, literary, or other achievements, but also from the adoption of a critical stance towards the practices of the authorities or from prevailing preconceived ideas on the global level. In this way, the concept of the intellectual is necessarily immanent with the normative position in the public sphere.