Intellectuals, Dissent, & Bureaucrats: Brief Notes on Large Matters

Of definitions of intellectuals there is no end. One major approach places intellectuals according to their social position or occupational role; this has at least the value of reducing our tendency to excessive pride, for it analyzes us in terms no different from those employed for the bourgeoisie, the lumpen proletariat, and other questionable types. A second approach places intellectuals according to their declared ideals, thereby buoying our morale by invoking a tradition of courage and independence. Intellectuals, says Edward Shils, “employ symbols of general scope and abstract reference, concerning man, society, nature and the cosmos.” They form, says Karl Mannheim, “an unanchored, relatively classless stratum...