The Role of the Intellectual II--This Time as Other-Criticism

Abstract

In this article, the author reflects on the points raised, twenty-five years ago, about the role of the intellectual in society. He distinguished, then, between the intellectual in search of truth and the intellectual in search of power. He subdivided the latter group into three subgroups: intellectuals arising from large-scale territorialism; large-scale capitalism; and large-scale abstractionism. He has now reached the conclusion that only intellectuals in search of truth are truly intellectuals; the rest are what he calls intelligentsia. Like J. A. Hobson, the author traces the many ways in which intelligentsia sell out to their sponsors. Although the author's previous article had pessimistic conclusions about the continued domination of thought and knowledge generation by special interests, he now expresses cautious optimism as to the tendency of the Internet and the information revolution to democratize knowledge and creativity and to break the monopoly of moneyed power and special interests over...