Intellectuals and Politics in 21st Century

Ramin Jahanbegloo

In 1959, the British scientist and novelist, C.P. Snow published his well-known essay, The Two Cultures. Its thesis was that the breakdown of communication between the "two cultures" of modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems. Half a century later, the discussion underlined by Snow has taken another form. The 21st century represents in general a separation between intellectuals and politics. Seldom have intellectuals and the political world diverged so much. However, there is an ongoing debate within the intellectual arena on the model which can describe in the best way the role and identity of intellectuals in the public sphere. As such, intellectuals are no more described as “super heroes of the mind”, but simply as critical idealists who look beyond the scope of our everyday life. Today critical intellectuals are an endangered species. Today’s intellectuals have a fear of the political and it seems as if the political has also a terrible indifference to what could be called “intellectual”. Many others have seen this process as a decline of the intellectual. This decline is usually described as a process of distancing from the public sphere toward an increasingly professionalized and managerial world. In other words, intellectuals are losing their public authority of speaking to power, while becoming incapable of carrying on their independent and critical functions. Never, indeed, critical consciousness and public sphere have been so profoundly opposed to one another. The move away from of the intellectuals from the political can be described as an effort to renegotiate the purpose and boundaries of the public sphere without taking into consideration the ethical imperatives of a dialogue with the political. As such, today’s intellectuals seem to think that since all moral truths are relative, there is no more a need to represent a moral voice in a voiceless world. The attempts of the intellectuals in the academia and other professional institutions to pretend that it is politically correct and wise to be dismissive of moral imperatives in the public sphere is a way of coinciding the humanitarian urge of our world  with the special needs of career-making. Salaried, tenured and pensioned, many intellectuals find themselves chained to the wheel of a respectable career and profession which grounds their capacity of critical mindedness in a non-adversarial context. More precisely, narrow professional self-interests have destroyed the so-called public interests of the intellectuals. Quickly and unrepentantly forgetting politics, many intellectuals in today’s world have degraded and abandoned the idea of public sphere evolving into uncritical supporters of mass culture. It is by virtue of this uncritical publicness that political and cultural experts have replaced intellectuals as sociological actors of our contemporary world. Engaged solely in discussing facts, the formers are not interested anymore in discussing values. As such, with the rise of the post-industrial global village, dominated by media networks and technologized communication in which critical voices are often drowned, what can be called the “epidemic of conformism” has completely paralyzed public life as a market-driven entity. Even more discouraging is the disappearance of what Karl Mannheim called in 1929, a “socially unattached intelligentsia” that would function independent of institutionalized concerns. It is, however, true that the intellectual has historically been imperfectly professionalized, because the intellectual does not have a pre-established body of knowledge.  Unlike an architect or a lawyer, who build and sue for their clients, intellectuals claim only to be engaged in an activity of the mind.  As such, intellectuals are individuals whose chief concern is with ideas and thinking about, and usually writing about, ideas, and thus by doing so they may affect the ethical and political foundations of the society. That is the reason why until very recently the intellectual was considered a moral voice of emancipation and enlightenment. Nietzsche says in his Genealogy of Morals that only that which has no history can be defined. This is very true of the concept of “intellectual”. One can certainly write a history of intellectuals in the West and in the East, but the category of “intellectual” remains nevertheless a problematic concept and difficult to define once for all. However, to investigate the evolution of intellectual engagement in the context of twentieth-century European history we need to start with the Dreyfus Affair in France, where the category of the “intellectual” became recognized for the first time, accompanied by a slightly different interpretation of its “public” role. Despite the ideological differences among intellectuals crystallized during the Dreyfus Affair, both sides agreed that the intellectual should be engage. But what an intellectual like Zola saw at stake in the Dreyfus Affair was to use his ideas as a way to denounce injustice. One of the intellectuals whose participation as a Dreyfusard influenced his entire life was the Jewish intellectual Julian Benda, best known for his La Trahison des Clercs, in which he argued famously that "the duty of the intellectual was to defend universal values, over and above the politics of the moment" Therefore, Benda conceives the intellectual as an individual who operates within a moral framework and adheres to transcendent values free of the impurities of politics. Zola probably deserves that honor, not because of his novels, but because he became an intellectual in the public sphere, attacking injustice, prejudice and intolerance. In that way, he restored the function Socrates had reserved for the philosopher- to stand for the universality of the quest for truth and to fight against violence. Socrates' method to tame violence was the use of dialogue against political persuasion. In carrying out his maieutic function: know thyself, Socrates was inviting the citizens of Athens to submit to a practical self-examination. Though an end in itself, learning to self-examine truthfully, but also critically, is also, and at the same time, a precondition and a starting point for an intellectual to act decently.   Decency is the opening into human plurality as such. It is being hospitable to the idea, intrinsic to the work of a dialogical intellectual that each person contains "multitudes" in oneself, as says Whitman in his "Song of Myself." An intellectual needs such multiplicity as a device to connect to others, but also to praise and value the differences that exist among people as constituent of the world.   The idea of difference presupposes another value as essential to the intellectual condition: respect. As such, respect for other people and self-respect are main elements of an intellectual work. Because an intellectual has enormous power to influence and change, he/she must be aware of the huge possible consequences of what he/she says and writes and does. Intellectuals are not only individual thinkers, but also public servants who stand for something far larger than the discipline from which they originated. They are constantly balancing the private and the public. That is to say, an intellectual’s personal commitment to an ideal must have relevance and respect for the society. This is how the intellectual engages him or herself with the changing issues of society while at the same time remaining true to certain unchanging principles. One of the tasks of the intellectual is to think how to reform and improve society. His/her primary effort is centered on the civic education of other citizens for the responsibility of democratic self-governance. It is important that intellectuals do not become passive in the face of contemporary social and political evils but rather partake in reform initiatives. If it be conceded that what we call critical examination of political sphere is coming to be regarded by large numbers of intellectuals as less of an interest in the game of life, does not the supreme value of history lose all its meaning for us? History, if not read and practiced critically, could become a simple repetition of human errors. While, if intellectuals commit themselves to history as an unpredictable project of trial and error, they require to have not just an open but a critical mind capable of understanding truths as partial and always in the process of self-examination. What is important here is the work of self-examination and critical reflection as a way to protect intellectuals from participating in evil. Given this approach, the question is: How does one talk about preserving the ethical in politics, and not becoming evil if traditional moral absolutes no longer exist? It would seem that neither by mindless conventionalism nor by paralyzing inaction induced by abstract philosophical thinking could people help avoid evil. However, as mentioned above, Socratic self-examination culminating in inner harmony and self-dialogue could represent a crucial means for intellectuals to reflect upon the moral quality of their lives or the state of their souls. Integral to the installation of the critical role of the intellectual in the public sphere is the use of self-critical reflection based on the active use of practical reason. This brings us to two complementary questions: How can critical intellectuals be public? And how can public intellectuals be critical? By critical intellectual one can refer to those whose work is cultural but disconnected from any immediate practical outcomes for which it can be held responsible. The problem for such intellectuals is that their critical work is produced at the price of a loss of any immediate political effectiveness. The practical intellectuals, on the contrary, are those engaged in some form of social management in practical contexts without the possibilities of critical reflection on their political practice. Two kinds of intellectual, then, each of whom, at least at first sight, seems to lack what the other possesses. Would it be correct to say that the first group of intellectuals make knowledge and values and the other group apply it to the political sphere? Or would it be more appropriate to consider public intellectuals as dominant holders of cultural capital who are also sociological actors of the public sphere. Involved in the cultural domain, public intellectuals have certain affinities of outlook and interest with those who are involved with the political sphere. It is, thus, misleading to assume that intellectuals adopt a permanent oppositional stance towards the political realm. From this point of view, what needs to be analyzed is less why intellectuals oppose the status quo than what is it that causes some of them to defend and collaborate with evil political systems. It is interesting to see that complicity with political evil is often derived among intellectuals from "nonpolitical" motives including anti-modern aesthetics and religious beliefs. In 1945, in one of her first essays following the end of the war in Europe, Hannah Arendt wrote that “the problem of evil will be the fundamental question of postwar intellectual life in Europe—as death became the fundamental problem after the last war.” I think Arendt was correct, especially because the problem of evil and its political implications still present a major challenge to the public status and moral integrity of intellectuals in today’s world. Intellectuals always had problems with evil, either as perpetuators or as victims of evil. Since Socrates, intelligent minds have known of evil as ignorance or as a weakness. They have even had a glimpse of what the theologians call “the diabolical”. However, the event of the Holocaust revealed to them an unavoidable “given” for any understanding of the problem of evil. To accept violence has always been widespread, fierce and politically effective among a segment of the intellectual class. But there is a sense in which intellectuals become traitors. This is when they are no more in a position to struggle against the inhuman from without and unmask its destructive tendencies. To say that the Holocaust has become a central symbol of the weakness of intellectuals to confront the inhuman in twentieth century is to state the obvious. There are a variety of explanations for this phenomenon. First and foremost is that the European and North American intellectuals were not ready to confront the issue. They were blinded by the lights of modern civilization and by the promises of scientific and technological progress. But even those who were disappointed and shaken by the failure of modernity, they had put their faith and hopes in what Heidegger once called the “marvelous hands” of Hitler. In the face of the Holocaust, European intellectuals became individuals whose lives and thoughts were characterized not by detachment and critic of the inhuman, but by an essentially ambiguous engagement with it. For most of them, the destruction of the Jews, Gypsies, handicaps and homosexuals by the SS officers was an internal matter of the Nazi regime with no immediate moral and global implications. In isolating something peculiarly German, European intellectuals seemed to ignore Germans' links to the rest of the world. They dissolved German history in a universal solvent. By doing so they understood the Nazi genocide as an element among others in the mental landscape of modernity. As such, the Final Solution was conceived by generations of Western intellectuals, on the same level as the guillotine or Western slavery, as a regressive moment of the Enlightenment project. The Holocaust thus became at most one case of genocide among others. It is in contrast to this omission of the novelty of the Holocaust in the history of intellectual thought that we need to stress once again the singularity of the Holocaust as an unavoidable given for any understanding of the moral responsibility of the intellectuals. It goes without saying that the Holocaust provides us with a paradigmatic reflection on the dialectics of intellectuals. It still remains the burden of the intellectuals in our time. Auschwitz introduced the word 'genocide' into the mental horizon of intellectuals. It is not possible today for intellectuals across the world to express their solidarity and empathy with the victims of crimes against humanity without bearing in mind that Auschwitz still represents a significant milestone in the history of the encounter with the inhuman. However, it is good to be reminded that Auschwitz emerged from within the portals of “modern” and “civilized” West. The architects of the Final Solution and its supporters were all schooled in Western thought and technology. Others like Heidegger, exempting themselves from the terms of a critique of modernity, tried to marry the critical life of an intellectual with the practical life of the political agent by being bewitched by the siren song of ideologies like Nazism or Stalinism. Heidegger’s critical engagement with Western metaphysics does not excuse his regrettable entanglements with National Socialism. His misadventures with Nazism, however, furnish direct confirmation that the failure to recognize the political evil calls into question the fate of the political as related to the peculiar destiny of modern intellectual. By embarking on a career of political action and intrigue, many intellectuals like Heidegger, Gentile, Brasillach and others, compromised their potential contributions to the formulation of a critical response to the ongoing crisis of modernity. Had they remained at their critical attitude, pursuing their critique of modernity, they might have understood the siren song of ideologies as a symptom of the larger crisis of modern intellectuals. In abandoning the critical reason for ideological politics, they effectively deserted their post as critical intellectuals without being adequately prepared to think and to face the inhuman. One lesson that we might glean from revisiting and rethinking the “Heidegger syndrome” is that the forbidden marriage between intellectuals and politics may occasionally be preferable to the rigid separation between the two, in order to make the intellectuals aware of the urgency of the inhuman in political praxis.

The Heidegger syndrome reminds us of Plato’s three famous unsuccessful voyages to Syracuse, undertaken in the hope of imparting philosophical wisdom to the city’s tyrant Dionysius the Younger. However, a good number of twentieth-century intellectuals disregarded the problems of pilgrimage to Syracuse. They willingly and openly served dictators like Hitler, Stalin, and African and Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes. At this point one can quickly arrive at a conclusion and affirm that: intellectuals would and could never succeed in turning tyrants toward democratic ideas. Expanding on Isaiah Berlin’s perspective, one can say that the dominant Western traditions, secular and religious, which have avowed an ultimate harmony of values through centuries, have constantly discouraged value pluralism. But whatever the political theories were and have become the tradition of critical public intellectual, extending from Socrates to the present, has played a significant role, not only in crafting it, but also in opposing its tyrannical destiny. Either as an engaged academic, a gentle animator of ideas or barbed-tongued social critics, intellectuals have always honored the specificity of critical individualism. Though intellectuals have performed their customary dual task of legitimizing and participating in power and that of criticizing those in power, they have reflected, explained and provided an interpretation of the body politic. Increasingly in all contemporary societies-whether democratic or non-democratic, the critical role of intellectuals has become more crucial, as they absorb within their social function all the conflicts, tensions, and dilemmas of today’s world. The result is that the critical role of intellectuals and their political responsibilities are more difficult and relevant than ever. There are two obvious alternatives here for the intellectual: being a state dominated technocrat and a “media celebrity” as formulated by Regis Debray, or staying critically independent and “free-floating” in the Mannheimian sense.  Karl Mannheim deals with intellectuals, as having an active role in social and political processes, though, according to him, they do not constitute a class and cannot organize as a party. On the basis of this analysis, Mannheim considers the intellectual as an “open-mindedly committed” actor who has a capacity to “empathize” with others. Mannheim’s emphasis on the capacity and readiness of the intellectual to alter his/her own conception of things on the basis of his dialogical exchanges with others could have direct methodological implications for a new definition of the intellectual as a sociological and political actor in today’s world. It seems that for Mannheim the ultimate intellectual value, “freedom of will,” is achieved only to the degree that the detached intellectual is able to free himself/herself from the closed systems and ultimate explanations. According to Mannheim, the intellectual should avoid all forms of cultural blinders and be able to juxtapose a number of perspectives, and thus to achieve an ever greater degree of reality. In the same manner as Karl Mannheim, John Dewey’s rejection of the traditional separation between thought and action, or theory and practice is exemplified by his position on the relationship between knowing, doing, and valuing. As he mentions in his book The Quest for Certainty, “an idealism of action that is devoted to creation of a future, instead of staking itself upon propositions about the past, is invincible.” What Dewey calls the “creation of a future” is actually an important consequence of empathy as an anticipation of the conduct of others. Empathy, then, in Dewey’s view, is above all a communal instrument. It is the requisite foundation of the social and political action of the intellectual through and within the public sphere. Therefore, if life, as Dewey believes, is enhanced through being shared, and it is enhanced greatly when sharing is a sharing, the work of the intellectual is to bring together the critical and the political  through an empathetic presence in the public space. As such, empathy is the ethos of public sphere itself, since it publicizes the idea of engagement with the other. This is why the work of public intellectuals is central to how public sphere is defined. Unlike the process of intellectual elitism and celebrity making which separates scholarship from moral and social commitments, the dialogical and empathetic engagement of public intellectuals is to raise an awareness of the political among the public, while enhancing the quality of decisions and actions in the public sphere. As such, the work of dialogical intellectuals is to get involved in a two-way interactive and collaborative relationship by encouraging and engaging the culture of dialogue in the community of differences. Far from the “monologic” public intellectuals who create and perform for a passive audience, dialogical intellectuals ought to work on the ideas of “solidarity building” and “public sharing”. This is precisely the challenge of nonviolent public intellectuals as participants in civil society organizations in order to better critique the tendency in public discourses which specify violence as a cultural element (as implied in the "clash of civilizations" thesis). This is possible only if nonviolence is retrieved from its present marginalization as a mere technique for political activism or personal behavior and understood more accurately as a coherent, universal, practical worldview that can inform a critical engagement with intellectual discourses of violence. These intellectual discourses are perhaps the greatest danger to democracy today and certainly to a public sphere that hopefully can transcend violence, but also political passivity. It is through such re-dedication to non-violence in the public sphere, that public intellectuals could reformulate the intercultural, interethnic, interreligious and intercontinental dialogue from a perspective of shared values common to all cultures and societies. Nonviolence is the human face of democracy building.  It is what gives democracy its dynamism and its promise. That is what public intellectuals should stand for and fight for in today’s world. Passive intellectualism and intellectual elitism are both precisely what intellectuals cannot afford in an age of interdependence, at a time when they are trying to bring together a global community of shared values so that they can confront global challenges together. Today we shape a new global community and in our new global community, we need shared values -- such as tolerance and non-violence to help us manage our shared global space we inhabit and manage it peacefully. For the new public intellectuals there should be no cultural boundaries. No East or West, no South or North, but only a mosaic and interrelated dimensions of global public life. This is an arena where intellectuals can practice the art of dialogue and empathy by engaging and promoting the thoughts and feelings of other people but also by fighting for equality and justice. Public intellectuals are , therefore, servants of humanity, because they are not only critics who struggle to write and speak in the global public sphere by denouncing injustice and abuses of power wherever they occur, but also those who seek to occupy a higher moral ground than particularistic interests in order to create and to support new democratic spheres.

For those among the public intellectuals who believe in the moral primacy of nonviolence, violence is something which needs to be tamed and transcended by directing humanity to democratic maturity. Unsurprisingly, dialogical intellectuals have a capacity to reflect disinterestedly upon the human condition by distancing themselves from the world of power. It is this moral precondition, rather than any ideological or doctrinal predisposition that can lead public intellectuals to speak to and to struggle against the inhuman. The belief among dialogical intellectuals in the struggle against the inhuman in its manifold forms is necessarily tied to the preference for prudent wisdom over an unleashed rationality which has been taken into hostage by the unthinkable and absurdity of the evil. Central to today’s politics of intellectuals is the plea for measure and moderation in all things against resignation and passivity. As such, there can be no doubt that the ethical engagement of dialogical intellectuals can serve them as a system of practical reason which allows them to pick and choose among their public affinities and styles of argument without being an observer of the follies and disasters of humankind.

It is true that we are all morally responsible for the world of disaster and injustice in which we live. But it is also true that the social and political role of intellectuals carry with it even more moral responsibility. Perhaps as Max Weber argues, an intellectual engagement in the world calls for the ethics of a hero, as it requires moral courage to face up to the responsibilities taken in the public sphere. In short, courage is the essential characteristic of intellectuals who, while devoted to the vita contemplativa play also a role in the vita activa. Of course, many do believe that being a public intellectual today is “no big deal” as there is no risk and challenge in being a democrat and living in democracies.  It is true that contemporary intellectuals rarely face in democratic societies the challenge of the Dreyfus Affair kind, but since there can be no effective democratization and globalization without real critical work of intellectuals as its counter-powers, being a public intellectual today means also acting as the moral consciousness of the global world. Because of this, the true struggle for public intellectuals is not only the struggle for or against the political, but mainly a moral battle for the humanitarian and against the inhuman. It is the courage to speak out on behalf of nonviolence and against injustice. This is the reason why, the function of the public intellectual, as a person whose mind watches the inhumanities and injustices of the world, should be maintained, even if the concept has lost today its Dreyfusian strength. The intellectual cannot be replaced by the cultural elite even if the temper of the time suggests it. Intellectuals have still a lot to contribute to the moral progress of human civilization. They will certainly be useful to human societies, as long as humans continue to believe that “hope” is not a futile word. The concept hope is also related to the destiny of intellectuals.  As such, intellectuals are themselves part of the change that they are trying to build for the twenty-first century.