new celebrity eggheads??

gates is totally still a public intellectual

fine, Gladwell's our Sartre

-- rogermexico., Saturday, April 19, 2008 9:29 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

jesus christ: the point isn't 'i agree with...' (in this case, sometime stalinist j-p) but 'are they a public intellectual?' i'm not repping for gladwell; on the other hand, are you really going out to bat for sartre?

i agree w. tipsy's list without actually digging on any of those people.

another question is how many of the 'public intellectuals' of any era are widely-read by academics in their own fields? obviously all of them are read to some extent but the only people i can think of who would potentially be described as public intellectuals who ive read in more than one class during my time at college are foucault and derrida and i dont really think either of them count

then again my exp in college is pretty specific and heavy on a certain kind of thought and certain kinds of thinkers and i cant speak to intellectuals from areas outside my interests

well back in the day John Locke and Etienne Condillac were public intellectuals that were read by specialists also; Locke's Essay was evidently a best-seller in London! More recently, John Rawls was such a figure. Foucault gets some respect among analytic philosophers, but Derrida is just the butt of jokes.

In math there are a few intellectuals known in the public, like Andrew Wiles, but mainly as freaks, not for their ideas (I think Stephen Hawking is known the same way).

haha, my linear algebra professor on wiles: "yeah, that dude's a speed freak"

wiles used to come to the video store where i worked in high school all the time

shy dude

yeah over drinks I could tell stories about mathematicians and drugs, but I won't kiss and tell on the internet.

Stanley Fish has a NYT blog. So does the Freakanomics guy.

Foucault gets some respect among analytic philosophers, but Derrida is just the butt of jokes.

im sure this is true but neither of them are analytic philosophers and both are widely-read in other academic disciplines. i was thinking more of someone like buckley--is he widely-read in politics departments, on any level? or sontag, outside of a couple essays most in art history/theory depts?

freakonomics guy is a public intellectual but i dont remember his name

sontag is definitely a public intellectual, practically an axiom.

another question is how many of the 'public intellectuals' of any era are widely-read by academics in their own fields? obviously all of them are read to some extent but the only people i can think of who would potentially be described as public intellectuals who ive read in more than one class during my time at college are foucault and derrida and i dont really think either of them count

-- max, Saturday, April 19, 2008 10:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

i think ya girl sontag fits this pretty well, also foucs and derrida -- but the point is really that they reach beyond even academia! academia so big since the 60s (uh in europe anyway) that this is debatable, but that's the idea anyway. nyrb, les temps moderne, encounter, criterion -- intellectuals write for a non-specialist but educated public.

nah but i guess what im thinking is that 'public intellectual' might (sometimes/often) describe guys and girls who non-academics think are really smart, famous, whatever, but who arent very widely-read w/in their fields or academia in general (dennett, for example)

that's possible. im sure dennett is read by some philosopher types -- whereas duder was saying that the french theorists were not, so much. within film studies, though, you encounter people who are au fait with the 60s/70s theory folk but kind of ignorant of yer actual film-critical tradition.

otm. in my intro film studies course we did do eisenstein, bazin, auteur theory and all, but by the 400-level courses it was all deconstructions of slash fiction and soap operas. there was stuff i liked in all of it, but there was a definite disconnect between the traditions.

on Dennett: he's of average interest within philosophy of mind, which is itself a subarea of philosophy. You wouldn't read him in a typical graduate course in philosophy of mind in 2008

^^this is the comment i was thinking of. im willing to still count the frenchies cause even if analytic philosophers dont read them thousands of other academics do, whereas someone like dennett isnt going to be read at all among academics outside philosophy depts and seems to not be particularly widely-read in philosophy depts despite being some sort of vague celebrity among the xkcd crowd and as much of a "public intellectual" as any

wld also be interested to know how freakonomics guy is taken by economics professors

Public intellectual well read by people in his field - John Dewey.

I think everyone I know who has done philosophy of mind has looked at a little Dennett. Bertrand Russell kind of fits what max is saying, had one big heavy book no one read (think he claimed he'd only heard of a handful of people that had read the whole thing) and then lots of popular stuff that doesn't seem to get studied at all.

michael hardt and toni negri might count as public intellectuals who are still read w/in their disciplines (or related disciplines)

10-15 years ago camille paglia would have been mentioned way before now (if with a lot of derision). but i guess she's faded. i know she still writes for salon, but i don't get the sense anyone cares about her anymore, even people who hate her. (i'm actually a sometime paglia defender, i think she gets kind of a bad rap. but she brought a lot of it on herself.)

tara_reid_scientist.jpg

Naomi Klein?

Oh yeah, and what's up with Cornell West in MTV ads?

Back in my college daze, (about a year ago), it seemed like Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, Giorgio Agamben, Warren Montag, and Achille Mbembe were all sort of the newer generation of celeb nerds. I think the only one of those folks who are young though is Mbembe.

John McWhorter

archbish of canterbury

Stanley Fish has a NYT blog. So does the Freakanomics guy.

As has MOMUS!

and suzanne vega...

Richard Littlejohn

archbish of canterbury

-- Frogman Henry, Sunday, 20 April 2008 17:31

lol

theory zzzzzzzzzzzz

well yeah

dr morbius public intellectual

NEVAH!

private intellectual

Wait, Morbs, it's Sunday, you're not supposed to be online on Sundays.

America has a great many public intellectuals. Only a handful or two on the list of people who scare David Horowitz qualify.

one list

The fact that Thomas Friedman is the 4th American from the top of that list isn't really helping your case.

Thomas Friedman (Our fourth greatest contemporary philosopher)

significance as a public intellectual does not necessarily vary directly with significance as an intellectual. the list was merely intended to illustrate what (some) people mean by the term, and as an alternative to the people listed in the horowitz book, which does not list public intellectuals.

Okay, Friedman fits within the list's qualifications. But I think when people bemoan the lack of public intellectuals in the U.S., they're complaining that aren't many academics or, uh, thinkers addressing a broadly similar constituency or contributing to the same discourse. Of course there are academics in various fields who have attracted a larger audience, but that list just sort of reinforces the feeling that a lot of these people aren't really talking to each other. Do Friedman and Jurgen Habermas share a public? Are they similarly qualified as 'intellectuals'?

share a public... sphere? lololololol

AC Grayling. He gets tarred with the popularist brush but he ain't no Alain de Boton. In a way he is going for the same mass-appeal, trying to bring philosophy to a wider audience, but he's a better thinker and writer and deals with more serious topics.

He's rubbish

i'm kind of impressed habermas is still alive.

He's rubbish

ah cmon gimme more than that.

Mediocre philospher for hire

being a public intellectual in contemporary America is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.

Since Fish has been mentioned this seems timely - O HAI I UPGRADED YR POMO:

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/french-theory-in-america-part-two/

http://www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk/nl/nlimages/eggheads.jpg

oh right