Who is an intellectual?

The following article appeared in Times of India, written by Anil Dharker. It argues and helps us to think about "intellectual" in a much better way.

Everyone loves making lists and everyone loves reading lists. So list-makers, in theory at least, cannot fail. Yet do they always succeed? When it comes to objective lists, there's no problem: computing a rich list, for example, is a matter of collating a lot of figures containing a lot of zeroes in them. Other forms of number crunching give us fascinating, and generally indisputable, lists like the Highest Grossing Movies of All Time. Gone With The Wind ruled for years, then came the Star Wars films, then The Titanic. Now the list changes every year. Then there are those like Best Selling Books Ever (the Bible, always the Bible) or the Most Expensive Real Estate in India (Rs 50,000 for the little space you stand on).


The problem begins when you make lists that require subjective judgment. The Ten Best Movies of All Time? Citizen Kane will be on everyone's piece of paper, but no one will agree on the other nine. The Best Cricket Team ever? Don Bradman will be on all lists but the other 10 players will be more a reflection of the list-maker's nationality and vintage than his knowledge of the game. The Best Recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? If one said Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, what's the betting that someone will remember versions by Bruno Walter or Wilhelm Furtwangler?


However difficult it is for people to agree on these subjective lists, there is at least agreement on what you are making a list about (movies, cricket team, symphony). Now folks at the American Foreign Policy magazine have rushed in where angels fear to tread. And the angels are wary of butting in for a very good reason: How do you make a list called The World's Top 100 Intellectuals, when it's difficult to agree on a definition of "intellectual" to start with?


Foreign Policy tries to make its selfimposed task easier by considering only what it calls "public intellectuals", which begs the question: What are "private intellectuals"? Then it names in its list people like former US vice president turned-green crusader Al Gore, longtime Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew, Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank fame and the controversial Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain. In what sense do they qualify as intellectuals? By definition (and not prejudice), one should eliminate all politicians and most social activists from a list of intellectuals, not because they lack intelligence but because they deal in certainties, an essential prerequisite for men (and women) of action, whereas the intellectual deals in the opposite spectrum of uncertainty, reasoned speculation, philosophical discussion and the like.


It is a given that an intellectual possesses an acute intelligence, but it doesn't follow that a very intelligent person is an intellectual. To give a deliberately outrageous example, Shane Warne in the ongoing IPL cricket tournament has displayed a highly developed intelligence. But wouldn't you become a bit of a joke if you called him intellectual? As for Sunita Narain, she may have shown an ability to influence wider debate as the magazine put it but did she consider both sides of the question, an essential trait of an intellectual before denouncing Coke and Pepsi? And if you become an intellectual by provoking vigorous debate should we consider Raj Thackeray an intellectual too?


The list also assumes that writers, because they live by their brains, are necessarily intellectuals. But there are writers and writers. Two on Foreign Policy's list, Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco, have wonderful imaginations. They play hide-and-seek with plot and characters, and perform acrobatics with language, but do they deal with abstract concepts and pure reason? Do they deal with pursuits that exercise the intellect, or do they, instead, cleverly manipulate our emotions?


To make an ideal list of intellectuals, it would be more fitting to start by first defining the term. How about Albert Camus's definition from his Notebooks? He said, "An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself". The Foreign Policy list, on the other hand, contains too many who want us to watch their minds. And marvel at their brilliance.