Editing Intellectual (section)

== Public intellectual<!-- 'Public intellectual' redirects here. --> ==
{{external media|float=right|video1=[https://www.c-span.org/video/?163104-1/role-intellectuals-public-life "Role of Intellectuals in Public Life", panel featuring Michael Ignatieff, Russell Jacoby, Roger Kimball, Susie Linfield, Alex Star, Ellen Willis and Alan Wolfe, March 1, 2001], [[C-SPAN]]}}
The term '''''public intellectual'''''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs [[discourse]] of society, in addition to an academic career.<ref>Etzioni, Amitai. Ed., ''Public Intellectuals'', Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.</ref> Regardless of their [[Academy|academic]] fields or [[profession]]al expertise, public intellectuals address and respond to the [[normative]] problems of society, and, as such, are expected to be impartial critics who can "rise above the partial preoccupation of one's own profession—and engage with the global issues of [[truth]], judgment, and [[Taste (sociology)|taste]] of the time".<ref>Bauman, 1987: 2.</ref><ref Name="Furedi2004"/>{{rp|32}} In ''Representations of the Intellectual'' (1994), [[Edward Said|Edward Saïd]] said that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society".<ref Name="Jennings">{{cite book |last1=Jennings |first1=Jeremy |last2=Kemp-Welch |first2=Tony |editor1-last=Jennings |editor1-first=Jeremy |editor2-last=Kemp-Welch |editor2-first=Tony |title=Intellectuals in Politics: From the Dreyfus Affair to Salman Rushdie |publisher=Routledge |date=1997 |pages=100–110 |chapter=The Century of the Intellectual: From Dreyfus to Salman Rushdie |isbn=0-415-14995-9}}</ref>{{rp|1–2}} Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a society, although the North American usage of the term ''intellectual'' includes the university academics.<ref>McKee (2001)</ref> The difference between ''intellectual'' and ''academic'' is participation in the realm of public affairs.<ref>Bourdieu 1989</ref>

[[Jürgen Habermas]]' ''The Structural Transformation of the 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-[[jester]]s 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".<ref>Ralf Dahrendorf, ''Der Intellektuelle und die Gesellschaft'', [[Die Zeit]], 20 March 1963, reprinted in ''The Intellectual and Society'', in ''On Intellectuals'', ed. Philip Rieff, Garden City, NY, 1969</ref>{{rp|51}}

An intellectual usually is associated with an [[ideology]] or with a [[philosophy]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=McLennan| first=Gregor|title=Traveling With Vehicular Ideas: The Case of the Third Way |date=2004|journal=Economy and Society |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=484–99| doi=10.1080/0308514042000285251| s2cid=145227353}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=March 2021}} 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 [[utopia]]n intellectuals who offer 'universal insights' to resolve the problems of [[political economy]] with [[Public policy|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 (social and political)|power]].<ref Name="Jennings"/>{{rp|13}}

=== Public engagement ===
The determining factor for a "thinker" (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist) to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which the individual is [[logical consequence|implicated]] and [[engaged theory|engaged]] with the vital reality of the contemporary world, i.e. participation in the public affairs of society. Consequently, being designated as a public intellectual is determined by the degree of influence of the designator's [[motivation]]s, opinions, and options of action (social, political, ideological), and by affinity with the given thinker.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

After the failure of the large-scale [[May 68]] movement in France, intellectuals within the country were often maligned for having specific areas of expertise while discussing general subjects like democracy. Intellectuals increasingly claimed to be within marginalized groups rather than their spokespeople, and centered their activism on the social problems relevant to their areas of expertise (such as gender relations in the case of psychologists). A similar shift occurred in China after the [[1989 Tiananmen Square protests|Tiananmen Square Massacre]] from the "universal intellectual" (who plans better futures from within academia) to ''minjian'' ("grassroots") intellectuals, the latter group represented by such figures as [[Wang Xiaobo]], social scientist [[Yu Jianrong]], and ''[[Yanhuang Chunqiu]]'' editor Ding Dong ({{lang|zh|丁東}}).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Béja|first=Jean-Philippe|date=2020|title=Review of Minjian: The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26959862|journal=China Review|volume=20|issue=4|pages=285–287|jstor=26959862|issn=1680-2012}}</ref>

=== Public policy ===
In the matters of [[Public policy doctrine|public policy]], the public intellectual connects scholarly research to the practical matters of solving societal problems. The British sociologist [[Michael Burawoy]], an exponent of [[public sociology]], said that professional sociology has failed by giving insufficient attention to resolving social problems, and that a dialogue between the academic and the layman would bridge the gap.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Social Scientist As Public Intellectual: Critical Reflections In A Changing World|last=Gattone|first=Charles|date=2006|publisher=Rowman and Littlefield}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=March 2021}} An example is how [[Chile]]an intellectuals worked to reestablish [[democracy]] within the [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]], [[Neoliberalism|neoliberal]] governments of the [[Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–90)|military dictatorship of 1973–1990]], the Pinochet régime allowed professional opportunities for some liberal and left-wing social scientists to work as politicians and as consultants in effort to realize the theoretical economics of the [[Chicago Boys]], but their access to [[Power (social and political)|power]] was contingent upon political [[pragmatism]], abandoning the political neutrality of the academic intellectual.<ref>Sorkin (2007)</ref>

In ''[[The Sociological Imagination]]'' (1959), [[C. Wright Mills]] said that academics had become ill-equipped for participating in public discourse, and that journalists usually are "more politically alert and knowledgeable than sociologists, economists, and especially ... political scientists".<ref name=Mills>{{cite book|title=The Sociological Imagination|last=Mills|first=Charles Wright|author-link=C. Wright Mills|date=1959|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford}}</ref>{{rp|99}} That, because the universities of the U.S. are bureaucratic, private businesses, they "do not teach [[Critical thinking|critical reasoning]] to the student", who then does not know "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society".<ref name=Mills/>{{Page needed|date=March 2021}} Likewise, [[Richard Rorty]] criticized the quality of participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of [[Intellectualism|intellect]], especially academic intellect".<ref name=Bender/>{{rp|142}}
{{external media | width = 210px | float = right | headerimage= | video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?169625-1/public-intellectuals ''Booknotes'' interview with Posner on ''Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline'', June 2, 2002], [[C-SPAN]]}} The American legal scholar [[Richard Posner]] said that the participation of academic public intellectuals in the public life of society is characterized by logically untidy and politically biased statements of the kind that would be unacceptable to academia. He concluded that there are few ideologically and politically independent public intellectuals, and disapproved public intellectuals who limit themselves to practical matters of public policy, and not with [[Value (ethics)|values]] or [[public philosophy]], or public [[ethics]], or [[public theology]], nor with matters of moral and spiritual outrage.