On Public Intellectuals and Their Conceptual Frameworks

Abstract

As we bemoan the posited general social irrelevance of our humanistic disciplines (humanities and social sciences alike), the role of public intellectuals becomes crucial. They have simultaneously three hypostases: of scholars, moral philosophers, and consummate communicators. When properly done, their work should bridge the chasm between the ivory tower and the public. Public intellectuals have been defi ned diff erently. There is the loft y and exacting portrayal of Edward Said, who demands of public intellectuals “a relentless erudition,” “a sense of the dramatic and the insurgent,” being superior in debate, devoid of pomposity, meeting with self-irony “the inescapable reality” that they will make no friends in high places: “It is a lonely condition, yes, but it is always a better one than a gregarious tolerance for the way things are.”1 Against this, there is the neutral, more encompassing, almost anodyne depiction of Alan Lightman, devoid of any evaluation: “Such a person is oft en trained in a particular discipline, such as linguistics, biology, history, economics, literary criticism, and who is on the faculty of a college or university. When such a person decides to write and speak to a larger audience than their professional colleagues, he or she becomes a ‘public intellectual.’”2 In his essay here, as well as his numerous public appearances and contributions, Timothy Snyder assumes the role of the public intellectual. While I would have loved to see him claim the exciting part scripted by Said, there is no doubt that he satisfi es Lightman’s criteria. But even in this minimal defi nition, the role of the public intellectual is a very diffi cult one, especially in keeping the necessary equilibrium between the public and the intellectual. Since Snyder indicates from the outset that he has engaged several dozen times in the public sphere on the issue of the Ukrainian crisis, I will address here the intellectual side of his essay, given that an academic journal such as Slavic Review, even as it seeks to open up to current and relevant public debates, (hopefully) still emphasizes the intellectual aspects. Implicitly, Snyder’s essay raises important questions about the relationship between scholarship and politics, between pundits and scholars, between hyperspecialized discourse and rhetoric. Explicitly, it is structured in a tripartite way. There is a conclusion that is used as a premise, linked by a scholarly argument to provide the proof. In logic this is called circulus in probando, that is, circular reasoning. What we have as a premise is a “true revolution,” mass killing, Ukrainian revolutionaries dying for Europe, Russian counterrevolutionaries, and a foreign imperial invasion. This leads to a similar conclusion but on a higher pitch of acrimony and buttressed by a