On Public Intellectualism in the Twenty-First Century

Michael Zuckert writes in the 2016 book Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: Professors or Pundits?

* the lure of public fame, power, and even wealth made available through the mass public audience leads to suspicions about the motives of public intellectuals. Are they first and foremost individuals devoted to truth, who turn their knowledge and talent to matters of public concern, or are they individuals out for celebrity, power, and wealth?

* there is an inverse relation between the public side of the public intellectual and the intellectual side. Brooks and Hitchens (d. 2011), for example, are much more public in both senses I have mentioned above, but less intellectual in the sense of firmly rooted in a knowledge base. In contrast are those who speak of public things in public but are more tightly attached to their intellectual base. If we think of public intellectuals as existing on a kind of continuum continuum with the intellectual, that is, knowledge base, at one end, and the publicness (in scope and audience) at the other, we can see that public intellectuals like Krugman lie somewhere midway between generalists like Brooks and specialist public intellectuals like, for example, the health economists, who consulted or spoke publicly on one or another aspect of the recent health – care reform that was very closely tied to their particular area of expertise. Krugman speaks out far more generally on economic matters on which he is presumed to be knowledgeable, but of which he is not likely to have the specialized knowledge of a health economist.

* Once human societies stop being essentially grounded in tradition, something like public intellectualism becomes constitutive for them. Tradition is replaced by the conscious application of human intelligence to public life. Those who do this are public intellectuals. There has indeed been a debate, since at least the time of the French Revolution, about the degree to which rationalism can or should replace tradition. Burke and modern conservatism arose largely in negative reaction against the perceived attempt by the French intellectuals to remake society in the image of reason. An irony here is that Burke and conservative thinkers like him were also public intellectuals, coming before the public with a case based on a knowledge base concerning the nature of society in order to oppose a certain sort of abstract rationalism.

* Liberal equality consists in the claim to be considered as an individual rather than a member of a group or clan when it comes to matters of basic rights, status before the law, and, so far as compatible with other liberal goods, opportunity. Thus we speak of equal rights, equality before the law, and equal opportunity.