We started class a few minutes late as my air conditioner started leaking about 30 minutes before the start of class, and we had to adjourn slightly earlier than originally intended b/c I had to meet the technician for an emergency repair. We will make up for the time lost next week by an extra-scintillating discussion!
I gave a brief introduction to the course topic, which can be summarily expressed as “An Analysis of Wokeism in the Intellectual Class in Contemporary America.” I didn’t fully define Wokeism, as we’ll be getting into that topic properly only later in the term. It’s sufficient at this point to define it as the latest version of an intellectual form of utopian belief that has become highly influential in American institutions.
Molnar, “The Emergence of the Intellectual”
This gives a brief account of the birth of the modern Western intellectual. Lots of historical detail, but here are a few key points to retain:
Human societies have long pursued Peace, Unity, and Prosperity, but in the pre-modern world it was recognized that perfectly achieving any of them was an impossibility. Technological advance and social changes (especially in the political order) made it seem beginning with the Renaissance that they might be perfectly achievable, and intellectuals began to devote themselves to the task of how to achieve them.
In the medieval world, a unity of belief and understanding of politics was achieved through Christianity. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Voyages of Discovery (especially that of the Americas) pushed Western societies away from this unity as the bourgeois class emerged as the leading social group. It quickly demonstrated antagonism to the old classes, which desired to preserve Christian unity and the balance of power between King and Church. The bourgeoisie had one sole interest: material acquisition. This increasingly became the dominant value in the West.
Intellectuals quickly established a symbiotic relationship with the bourgeois class, becoming their advocates and their source of technical innovations that drove production ever higher. Figures such as Rousseau expounded philosophies that preached that human nature was pristine and only corrupted by bad social arrangements. The search was thus on for the perfect political and social order in which humankind could flourish. But in addition to producing liberal democracy, these new intellectual worldviews also led to totalitarianisms, including what Molnar calls “totalitarian democracy.”
As modernity advanced, the intellectual class came to understand its own mission as superior to that of its bourgeois allies. Increasingly, intellectuals began to yearn to rule themselves instead of subordinating themselves to others.
Collins, “Coalitions of the Mind”
The main theme you should take from Collins is that intellectuals can be defined as those individuals who dedicate themselves to the “sacred object” of “Truth.” This sacred object operates for them according to the same basic symbolic principles as holy objects operate for the religious community.
Collins also argues that intellectuals pursue positions of status in their intellectual ranks in their behaviors with respect to the sacred objects. They participate in constant “interaction rituals” in which they can display their prowess with ideas in lectures and intellectual meetings, show their positions on debates and disputes in writings and public talks, and thereby rank themselves among others in the intellectual group.
He means the concept of interaction rituals to be generalizable, that is, all humans participate in these, and for the same basic sociological reason: to rank themselves in status hierarchies. In this way, Collins gives us a useful sociological theory for understanding the activity and beliefs of intellectuals.
Gouldner, “Introduction”
As I mentioned in class, we’ll be reading a few more chapters of Gouldner’s book The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class as the semester continues.
In this introduction, he sets the stage for his discussion of what he calls the New Class (the modern intellectual class, which has two subparts: humanistic intellectuals and the technical intelligentsia) by briefly looking at some historical elements of the intellectual class’s emergence. Some of the ground covered overlaps with Molnar, e.g., both emphasize the importance of secularization in the rise of the intellectual class. Gouldner however is more a sociologist than a philosopher, and so he talks a good deal about the major institutional setting of intellectual life: the school. Schools become a space in which a whole new culture is produced and foisted upon students, centering on a new form of discourse that he will describe more later, the Culture of Critical Discourse (CCD).
The two types of intellectuals split in their functions and their attitudes to the social world. Humanistic intellectuals become more alienated from the societies in which they live, as they are marginalized from social and political power and feel as though they should be higher on the status hierarchy. They are driven to challenge and attack their own social orders, pointing toward utopian alternatives in which the realm of ideas will play a more central role.
Some questions to help prompt your blog writing:
How can we put these three perspectives on the modern intellectual class into conversation with one another? Are they compatible? If not, why not?
Why should we consider intellectuals in an analytical lens that is not their own? That is, what is the benefit of studying intellectuals the same way that they study other objects (e.g., microbes, or political states, or religious communities)?
Gouldner and Molnar share the view that intellectuals are a power-seeking social group, just as all other groups are. What do you think the intellectuals themselves would say about this? Which of the various scenarios Gouldner presents as possible future roles for the New Class (pp. 6-7) do you think has most been realized since he wrote his book (published 1979)?