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The intellectual is traditionally thought of as one who is critical of the established order, & who questions the fundamental premises underlying beliefs, values, & behavior. His position is analogous to that of Georg Simmel's stranger: "an element of the group $... whose membership $... involves being outside & confronting it" (reference not provided). It is argued that the position of the conservative intellectual today is an ambiguous one. Similar to the committed intellectuals of the Left who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s & 1940s, today's conservative intellectuals exist in an encapsulated world, & are lulled by the approval & support they receive into an uncritical acceptance of the status quo. Thus, their function becomes more one of preservation of an established order than of critical discourse. S. McAneny

The world has evolved, yet in the Horn of Africa people continue to settle ancient scores amongst themselves. As at the time of the Crusades, they confront one another along the same battlelines and from the same ideological trenches. The intellectuals of the region have proved unable to emancipate themselves from the dominant discourses of their societies and cultures and their power structures. Intellectuals throughout the region have been seduced, suborned and instrumentalised by power. They have rallied to every flag of convenience raised by powerholders and powerseekers, In so doing, they have betrayed their calling and their people. What this region needs is intellectuals with integrity and the will to resist the temptation of power. It is time for the intellectuals of the Horn of Africa to launch a 'liberation movement' of and for themselves. A movement for the emancipation of critical thought and its use for the benefit of the common man and woman.

Originally published in the May 1961 issue of Monthly Review, when the New Left movement was beginning to emerge in the US in the 1960s, & republished in hopes of guiding the current generation of New Leftists, which is beginning to push its way into the political arena. A distinction is made between two conceptions of an intellectual: "intellect workers" use their minds rather than their muscles, but are not necessarily "intellectuals," who inhabit all SCs & occupations. The "intellect worker" is a faithful servant of the status quo & ideal spokesperson for the capitalist system, focusing on the job at hand & separating means & ends. The "intellectuals," on the other hand, maintain more than a tangential connection to true historical process: the interrelations between various aspects of human existence permeate their thoughts & their work, & means are always connected to ends. Ethical implications of each position are examined, & some arguments advanced by intellectuals who claim to be "ethical neutralists" are challenged. An adherence to humanism is argued to be the axiomatic foundation of all meaningful intellectual effort, together with courage & a desire to tell the truth. K. Hyatt

"Raymond Aron's 1955 masterpiece The Opium of the Intellectuals, is one of the great works of twentieth- century political reflection. Aron shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular religion" and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the truth about social and political reality-in all its mundane imperfections and tragic complexities. Aron explodes the three "myths" of radical thought: the Left, the Revolution, and the Proletariat. Each of these ideas, Aron shows, are ideological, mystifying rather than illuminating. He also provides a fascinating sociology of intellectual life and a powerful critique of historical determinism in the classically restrained prose for which he is justly famous. For this new edition, prepared by Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian C. Anderson as part of Transaction's ongoing "Aron Project," political scientist Harvey Mansfield provides a luminous introduction that underscores the permanent relevance of Aron's work. The new edition also includes as an appendix "Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith," a remarkable essay that Aron wrote to defend Opium from its critics and to explain further his view of the proper role of political thinking. The book will be of interest to all students of political theory, history, and sociology."--Provided by publisher.

The relationship between the development of the modern state & the emergence of the intellectual class in Western societies is examined to assess the extent to which the intellectual is a dying breed. It is noted that the collusion between the state & the intellectual class eventually yielded to two parallel trends: the gradual replacement of ideological mobilization by the panoptical system of rule & control, & the division of intellectual work into narrowly defined areas of specialty. These trends sparked a demand for self-assertion on the part of intellectuals that found expression on three fronts: the political, the professional, & in leadership positions. The unstable unification of intellectuals as defenders of freedom in the twentieth century is discussed, & the ambivalent relationship between the educated classes & political administrators examined. Michel Foucault's much-discussed "obituary" to the universal intellectual, in which he implores scholars to focus on local concerns rather than universal ones, is appraised, & the curious silence on the part of the intellectual class throughout much of the 1980s is investigated. W. Howard

The retreat from Marxism by intellectuals worldwide, & their subsequent turn to liberal democratic politics & neoclassical economics, are compared to similar patterns of activity during the 1930s & 1950s, which were enacted within a vastly different environment. Focus is on the current decline of working-class power, regional variations & destinations, & retreat routes, eg, Gramscian revisionism, the doctrine of indeterminancy, neoclassical economo-Marxism, & the policy advisory perspective. The shift in Latin American intellectual life at the beginning of the 1980s from an organic to an institutional approach, reconciled to ideological agendas of overseas funding agencies & postdictatorial indeterminancy democratization, is discussed. It is concluded that the movement away from Marxism, while related to declining power of the working-class movement & rising power of cultural & economic capital, reveals that intellectual discourse is separate from historical reality. V. Wagener

Argues the possibility of creating a democratic state within an Islamic system; focuses on intellectuals' role in the democratization process and civil society; Iran.

A study of the relation of intellectuals to public opinion suggests the outlines of a sociology of the intellectuals as a functioning social group. The libertas philosophandi has long been asserted by the educated elite, and in pre-democratic days the theoretical relation to public opinion was quite clear. Philosophers have had the civil liberty to criticize government, but the same right was not generously extended to the vulgar conscience, or the common men who composed the "open public." Actually, the rise of democracy has not really clarified the issue, though the mass or Gnostic movements of modern times have asserted the right to judge the government, the intellectuals, and any other group that might stand in the way of political victory. The democratic intellectual can hardly say that the revolting mass does not have the right to judge him, but he can and does say that public opinion must be reformed, purified, educated, or directed by the latest in scientific hypothesis. More especially, however, the modern selfconscious intellectuals have directed their fire against other groups or elites who have a following and who in fact provide a pluralistic leadership of public opinion.

AbstractThe idea that moral virtues form some sort of "unity" has received considerable attention from virtue theorists. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of unity among intellectual virtues has been wrongly overlooked. My approach has two main components. First, I work to distinguish the variety of different views that are available under the description of a unity thesis. I suggest that these views can be categorised depending on whether they are versions ofstandard unityor ofstrong unity.Standard unityclaims that the possession of one virtue implies possession of all the others.Strong unityclaims that the virtues are, in some sense, all the same thing. By exploring what these different versions of unity would look like when applied to intellectual virtues, I aim to provide a menu of options for future work in virtue epistemology. I then develop and defend one of these options in more detail, arguing that the initially less plausiblestrong unityhas merit when applied to the intellectual sphere. In these two ways, I aim to show that the possibility of unity among the intellectual virtues is deserving of serious consideration.