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What is a public intellectual? Where are they to be found? What accounts for the lament today that public intellectuals are either few in number or, worse, irrelevant? While there is a small literature on the role of public intellectuals, it is organized around various thinkers rather than focusing on different countries or the unique opportunities and challenges inherent in varied disciplines or professions. In Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena, Michael C. Desch has gathered a group of contributors to offer a timely and far-reaching reassessment of the role of public intellectuals in a variety of Western and non-Western settings. The contributors delineate the centrality of historical consciousness, philosophical self-understanding, and ethical imperatives for any intelligentsia who presume to speak the truth to power. The first section provides in-depth studies of the role of public intellectuals in a variety of countries or regions, including the United States, Latin America, China, and the Islamic world. The essays in the second section take up the question of why public intellectuals vary so widely across different disciplines. These chapters chronicle changes in the disciplines of philosophy and economics, changes that "have combined to dethrone the former and elevate the latter as the preeminent homes of public intellectuals in the academy." Also included are chapters that consider the evolving roles of the natural scientist, the former diplomat, and the blogger as public intellectuals. The final section provides concluding perspectives about the duties of public intellectuals in the twenty-first century.
“'The evolving edifice of public intellectualism,' to use the term of Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena’s editor Michael C. Desch, rests on a foundation whose cement seems to be returning to sand. We have it on good information what comes next. . . . We citizens need a new core curriculum: that much this volume makes clear. . . . And we need the active presence of that ancient Augustinian city, portending a new one. We need a civil society founded upon the bedrock of institutions that store up treasure capital cannot see. And we need teachers—intellectuals, if you will—who can help us to see and seize that treasure. Now." —Commonweal
Michael C. Desch is professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center.
Acknowledgments
Public Intellectuals: An Introduction by Michael C. Desch
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Historical Consciousness, Realism, and Public Intellectuals in American Society by Jeremi Suri
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American Public Intellectuals and the Early Cold War, or, Mad about Henry Wallace by Andrew J. Bacevich
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The Public Intellectual in China by Willy Lam
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Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Latin America by Enrique Krauze
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The Intellectual, Culture, and the State: The Experiences and Failures of Enlightenment in the Arab World by Ahmad S. Moussalli
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The Philosopher as Public Intellectual by Patrick Baert
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The Economist as . . . ? The Public Square and Economists by J. Bradford Delong
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Of Mirrors and Media: The Blogger as Public Intellectual by Paul Horwitz
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Science in the Crosshairs: The Public Role of Science and Scientists by Kenneth R. Miller
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Diplomats as Intellectuals: An Unlikely Combination by Gilles Adréani
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Reckless Minds: Caveat Lector by Mark LIlla
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Caveat Lilla: On Public Intellectualism in the Twenty-First Century by Michael Zuckert
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The Public Intellectual as Teacher and Students as Public: Declining and Falling Apart by Patrick J. Deneen
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The Ethical Imperative for Some Scholars to Be Public Intellectuals and for the Rest to Let Them Do So by Michael C. Desch
Concluding Thoughts: Toward a Typology of Public Intellectuals by Vittorio Hösle
List of Contributors
Index