Here are some highlights from this 2016 book.
Patrick Baert writes:
* My underlying thread is that intellectuals, including public intellectuals, are constantly involved in various forms of positioning and, crucially, that new societal conditions encourage novel forms of positioning while discouraging others.
* Authoritative public intellectuals thrive in a very particular setting. They thrive in societies in which a significant section of the population values intellectual life and in which nevertheless the cultural and intellectual capital is concentrated within a small elite. They thrive in a hierarchical educational context, with “hierarchical” referring to a clear distinction not only between elite institutions and other higher education establishments but also between high- and low-status disciplines. They can exist independently of academic appointments because of independent resources, gained from family wealth or successful exploitation of the media of the time (book-writing and print journalism in the first half of the twentieth century, broadcasting in the second half and beyond). They tend to surface when the academic setting is more amorphous, with limited specialization, and especially when the social sciences are poorly professionalized. It is in this very specific context that authoritative public intellectuals like Sartre and Russell have a field day. Steeped in highprofile disciples like philosophy and mathematics and with the confidence of the right habitus and an elite education, they can speak to a wide range of social and political issues without being criticized for dilettantism. The early part of the twentieth century, especially in parts of Europe, fits this ideal type remarkably well. It was the era of the philosopher as public intellectual.
What has changed since? First, philosophy has lost to a certain extent its previous intellectual dominance. This is partly due to the rise, during the latter part of the twentieth century, of various philosophical currents, such as postmodernism and neopragmatism, which questioned, if not undermined, the erstwhile superiority of philosophy over other vocabularies. Within the Anglo-Saxon context, Rorty and Richard Bernstein epitomize this strand, advocating Gadamerian hermeneutics and Dewey’s pragmatism over epistemology.10 But besides the developments within philosophy itself, other factors also came into play. The social sciences have emerged as a significant force and have professionalized, making it more difficult for philosophers or others without appropriate training and expertise in the social sciences to make authoritative claims about the nature of the social and political world without being challenged. Massive expansion of the ranks of professional social scientists means there are now lifelong specialists in the areas that public intellectuals used to comment on who are better placed to contest such “generalist” interventions as uninformed and superficial.
* Second, with high educational levels for larger sections of society, the erstwhile distinction between an intellectual elite and the rest no longer holds to quite the same extent. With higher education also comes a growing skepticism towards epistemic and moral authority, an increasing recognition of the fallibility of knowledge and of the existence of alternative perspectives. Speaking from above and at their audience, as authoritative public intellectuals do, is no longer as acceptable as it used to be. Print and broadcasting media have become less deferential and more willing to challenge the statements of politicians and other public figures a process assisted by the arrival of journalists with higher education and subject specialism.
* If various societal forces have worked against the authoritative public intellectual, then what has emerged in its place? In the first instance, “expert public intellectuals” have come to the forefront. These are public intellectuals who draw on their professional knowledge, derived from their research in the social or natural sciences, to engage with wider societal or political issues that go beyond their narrow expertise.
* Social scientists, on other hand, are much better placed to act as expert public intellectuals, equipped as they are with well-rehearsed methods and specialized as they are in analyzing contemporary social and political phenomena…
* There is, second, the rise of what I would call the dialogical public intellectual. Contrary to both authoritative and expert public intellectuals, dialogical public intellectuals do not assume a superior stance towards their publics. Rather, they present themselves as equals to their publics, learning as much from them as vice versa…
* Philosophy, as practiced in the realm of the academy, has become quite removed from the rough and tumble of contemporary society. It is telling that in the current economic crisis very few philosophers have intervened in ways that have resonated with the wider public. This is, as I pointed out earlier, partly because, in the wake of the collapse of communism as a project with global aspirations, the general public has become more wary of theoretical schemes about what a future society should look like. But it is also partly because the way in which philosophers are being trained, especially within an Anglo-Saxon setting, is not really conducive to a critical and constructive engagement with issues that currently concern the wider public. In this context, philosophers are most likely to be successful in retaining a public profile when dealing with questions for which there is no obvious empirical resolution, including issues of faith or ethical choices.
* As one of the researchers on the new social media points out, the opposition of bloggers to journalism “is
raised largely by channelling the voice of the people” and offering “a more intimate, personal kind of authority in place of the impersonal authority of journalists. . . . What the bloggers asserted through use of readers’ messages was that there was no difference between themselves and their audience.”21 In this new context, a “democratic” form of positioning is more likely to provide intellectuals with the necessary credibility and to help the dissemination of their ideas. This strategic advantage of the dialogical public intellectual in the current constellation explains his or her recent rise in various domains. So the notion of positioning is a significant component of the story.
LAW PROFESSOR PAUL HORWITZ WRITES:
The Blogger as Public Intellectual
* Have the Internet and the blogosphere opened up new vistas for public intellectuals? And, if they have, do public intellectuals acting as bloggers operate any differently than do traditional public intellectuals taking advantage of other conventional communications media?
* Public intellectuals have benefited as much or more from the rise of other communications media, such as radio and television, as other speakers. But the blog, as a medium, offers some more or less unique benefits that those other media do not. Public intellectuals have certainly taken advantage of those benefits to open up “new vistas.”
* I would suggest that the ethic of the blog is made up of three core qualities: immediacy, connectivity, and feedback.
* Blogospheric norms encourage fairly quick reactions to current events—“hot takes,” as current lingo has it whether those events are occurring in one’s own life or across the world. A blogger who sits on an event or an idea risks having that idea or news item become stale. Staleness is especially problematic in a quickly moving environment with countless competitors, all of whom operate at relatively low cost and are equally capable of being accessed instantly by readers. The blogosphere is no place for an idle or contemplative writer. If you have more to say about something, you can always write a new post later. In the meantime, the race goes to the swiftest.
* Immediacy is no guarantee of depth. To the contrary, the faster one’s reactions, the less likely they are to contain any depth at all. Many blog posts, especially in light of the desire to be first to link to a new story, become simple “aggregation” posts: posts that do no more than link to a story or to commentary on other blogs, without adding any content other than the obligatory “Interesting” or “Read the whole thing.” The initial post may promise later posts offering more and deeper analysis, but such promises are often forgotten in the press of events or superseded by other developments.
* First, many public intellectuals blog about events that are not within their expertise, and will enjoy no particular advantage here. Second, although there will be times when genuine experts are quick to respond to an event with valuable analysis, there is no guarantee they will be any faster than an even larger number of nonexperts, who will be happy to bloviate with stunning rapidity on issues about which they know little or nothing. Third, intellectuals, no less than others, are often captive to their own priors and passions, especially when they are responding in real time. Finally, although some expert intellectuals are skilled at communicating to a general educated audience, others are not—and the nonexperts may be more eloquent or provocative, even (especially?) if they lack more than surface knowledge of the subject. The race for the attention of the blog-reading public goes not only to the swiftest but to the most readable. There is no guarantee that the winners will be the most thoughtful or expert writers. If anything, the ongoing academization of expertise makes this less likely to happen…
* Academic work encourages habits of mind, and especially habits of writing, that limit one’s audience to other academics, and generally other specialists within one’s own field. To become an academic is a time-consuming enterprise. It takes years to be credentialed as an academic, and still more to gain an academic reputation. Gaining that reputation generally requires the academic to write specifically for his or her peers, in a format that is not highly accessible, either in terms of style or content or, in straight physical and financial terms, in terms of the forum of publication; even in the Internet age, academic journals are expensive and hard to find for those who are not affiliated with a university. We write on narrow topics and write to be read and understood by the few, not the many.
* In sum, the blogosphere is unquestionably a boon for the would-be public intellectual. It serves as a counterweight to the “academization of intellectual output [that] created barriers to the flourishing of public intellectuals.” 71 It both offers room to the nonacademic public intellectual and lowers the opportunity costs of engaging in general public intellectual work by academics. It “democratizes the function of public intellectual,”
72 routing around the traditional gatekeepers and allowing a much wider range of people to make genuine contributions to a true dialogue. The narrative of public intellectuals in decline that was so much in vogue a mere decade or so ago is now in need of considerable revision.
* First, public intellectual blogging routinely involves a good deal of illegitimate trading on authority. Many academics are wrongly convinced that they are smart about everything, not just their own corner of their own subject. Although some carefully limit their public writing to their own area of academic specialization, many are eager to write about the same broad political and cultural subjects that all public intellectuals turn to. And in doing so, they are more than happy to flaunt their academic credentials, no matter how irrelevant they are to the subject at hand…
Second, public intellectuals, academic or otherwise, are as capable of being ruled by the passions of the moment as anyone else. The immediacy that is one of the core aspects of the ethic of blogging exacerbates those tendencies by removing even the slightest time for reflection and incentivizing them to write quickly. In the grip of their convictions, they are less likely to write with humility or to second-guess themselves, and more likely to make unnecessary predictions, adopt an unwarranted air of certainty, assume the worst of their opponents, and write with a hot tempered voice.
Third, although blogging public intellectuals are more likely to find a wider audience for their work,74 that audience is not necessarily going to be much more politically diverse…
To this, though, must be added the evanescence of the blogosphere.
* Lawyers possess most of the skills that are key to success in the blogosphere. (And legal academics possess not only lawyers’ skills but also some extra public intellectual chops—and, most importantly, a good deal of free time in which to blog.) Much of human activity and current events intersects with the law, so they never lack for a subject. Legal academics, even more so than social scientists, tend to be intellectual bricoleurs and parasites, borrowing tools and perspectives from whatever field of knowledge seems handy or trendy. The fast turnaround that the blogosphere prefers is made easier for the lawyer by their main skill, which is to engage in skillful, if often half-informed, logic chopping.
