Many argue that public intellectuals are losing their once strong audience. These people—known for extensive studies in academic areas as well their application of theories and insights to current society—may becoming unappreciated and outdated.
With the questions of the future of the public intellectual, a problem arises in how to define them. Today, is there a distinctive difference between public intellectuals and just writers? The creation and ease of the Internet creates more questions about defining a public intellectual. Anyone can create a blog or personal website—how do we differentiate between authors, public intellectuals, and those simply writing as a pastime. It seems fairly obviously to separate leisure writers and published, distinguished authors, but how do we differentiate between the latter and public intellectuals?
Alan Lightman, a professor at MIT and a public intellectual himself, devised a system of three tiers to classify public intellectuals. These levels are defined in his piece, “The Role of the Public Intellectual.” He classifies public intellectuals by the following standards:
Level I: Speaking and writing for the public exclusively about your discipline. This kind of discourse is extremely important, and it involves good, clear, simplified explanations of the national debt, the how cancer genes work, or whatever your subject is.
...
Level II: Speaking and writing about your discipline and how it relates to the social, cultural, and political world around it. A scientist in this Level II category might include a lot of biographical material, glimpses into the society and anthropology of the culture of science.
...
Level III: By invitation only. The intellectual has become elevated to a symbol, a person that stands for something far larger than the discipline from which he or she originated. A Level III intellectual is asked to write and speak about a large range of public issues, not necessarily directly connected to their original field of expertise at all.
Some believe public intellectuals are on quickly becoming irrelevant, such as Richard Posner in his book Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. Others, however, insist that the Internet has lead to a renaissance of diverse public intellectuals. One such person is Daniel Drezner, a political economist from Tufts University, who recently published an essay that seemingly lowered expectations to become a public intellectual and therefore included significantly more people.
New York Times blogger Barry Gewen argues against this trend of increasing inclusivity of authors into the elite category of public intellectuals. He states in his blog
for [writers Fareed Zakaria and Samantha Power] to be considered public intellectuals in the old New York Intellectual sense — with its commitment to cultural “centrality” — I think they would have to demonstrate greater breadth than they have so far displayed.
He opposes the classification of authors of serious books who have attracted a modicum of attention as public intellectuals. He views the public intellectual as someone more concerned about a broad variety of information and the impact on society, rather than a specialist in one area.
However, we must consider that human knowledge is growing at exponential rate. It seems especially unrealistic to expect public intellectuals to write intelligently and insightfully about, for example, politics and the economy, physics, and computers. It seems public intellectuals have evolved from generalists to specialists.
Narrow specialization of public intellectuals may prevail at the expense of a broad perspective, but the recent transformation of mass communication has increased the transparency of public intellectuals. With the ability to publish a piece on the Internet with the click of a button, public intellectuals can easily share their opinions with anyone who wishes to read it.
Stephen Mack offers a completely different but perhaps more appropriate means of classifying public intellectuals. In his article “The ‘Decline of Public Intellectuals?,” he writes
So, is there any way of conceptualizing something called the public intellectual that is consistent with democratic values? Of course there is, but it needs to begin with a shift from “categories and class” to “function.” That is, our notions of the public intellectual need to focus less on who or what a public intellectual is—and by extension, the qualifications for getting and keeping the title. Instead, we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.
I agree that a person’s contributions should define them as a person, and the public should not be focused on the celebrity of a public intellectual. However, established public intellectuals have created a name and an image for themselves through previous work and ideas. Previous work defines a person, and essentially, it becomes difficult to completely separate a person from their work.
One such person who has used their academic history and strong beliefs to become a public intellectual is Sam Harris. The first time I ever heard of Sam Harris was April of 2007. He was interviewed with Rick Warren—an evangelical pastor who launched the megachurch Saddleback Church—in Newsweek, and I was instantly fascinated by his intelligence, biting comments, and scientific skepticism. I was fascinated. To this day, I have not forgotten this segment of the interview:
Rick, if you had been born in India or in Iran, would you have different religious beliefs?
WARREN: There's no doubt where you're born influences your initial beliefs. Regardless of where you were born, there are some things you can know about God, even without the Bible. For instance, I look at the world and I say, "God likes variety." I say, "God likes beauty." I say, "God likes order," and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.
HARRIS: Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.
WARREN: I would attribute a lot of the sins in the world to myself.
HARRIS: Are you responsible for smallpox?
Two and a half years later, I was with one of my friends and somehow (I wish I knew the context) the subject of natural selection came up. Seconds into the conversation, he said “I don't know if I believe in evolution.” I was shocked. How do you not believe in evolution? I literally had no words. Growing up in a liberal family and attending a secular school, I naively assumed that by 2009, everyone knew that evolution is a proven fact. (As Sam Harris says, “Nature offers no compelling evidence for an intelligent designer and countless examples of unintelligent design.”) I went home to talk to my (also) very liberal roommate about this, and after she expressed her equal bewilderment, I tried to explain Sam Harris’s interview, as it still resonated with me. Thanks to the scope of the Internet, and the archives of newsweek.com, we quickly found the article and reveled in knowing that at least one person out there was standing up for science.
I started Googling him and learned all about his background and efforts to spread scientific knowledge in conjunction with secular beliefs. His first book, The End of Faith, discusses organized religion and the problems with tolerance of religious fundamentalism. His second book, Letter to a Christian Nation (which is about 75 pages long and definitely worth reading, regardless of your religion), is a response to all the criticism he received from the first book. Despite the title, as he says in the introduction,
“the primary purpose of the book is to arm secularists in our society, who believe that religion should be kept out of public policy, against their opponents on the Christian Right. Consequently, the “Christian” I address throughout is a Christian in a narrow sense of the term…I have set out to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed forms. (Letter to a Christian Nation viii-ix).
In additionally to publishing these nonfiction books, Sam Harris has been published in many news magazines and newspapers, and has been featured on numerous TV shows, such as The O’Reilly Factor,
He frequently debates religious leaders, and here he is with Rabbi David Wolpe.
He recently pioneered The Reason Project, “a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.” This project focuses on producing films holding conferences, sponsoring studies, and conducting research and opinion polls to ultimately erase dogmatism and fanaticism.
Sam Harris is a specialist regarding religion, science, and their combination and effect on society. He uses all forms of mass media to address and convince the public of the inherent flaws of religion. He has strong opinions on religion and the future of reason and, like all public intellectuals, has not and will not stop educating the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment