What is a intellectual?
Yin Hanguang
When the Times of the Times Weekly said [1], people who have received a doctogen level have long been regarded as intellectuals. That is, it is not a knowledge of college professors. As for scientists, it is only a intellectual only under limited conditions. This issue is defined under the two assumptions:
First, a knowledge of more than a person is more than one. A intellectual spirit must have independent spirit and original capabilities. He must pursue the concept for the concept. For example, Richard HofstadTer said, a intellectual life is for the pursuit of ideas. Christopher Lasch said that intellectuals is a person who lives with thought.
Second, the intellectual must be the critics of his society and the opponents of existing values. Criticism his society and opposes existing value, is a Socrate's mission.
One person does not have a popular opinion, existing custom habits, and everyone in the unintentional value, and proposes criticism, then, this person is a lot of reading, but it is a living bookcase. A reader of "People Yun Yun", at least in the heart of the soul.
If the intellectuals are defined in accordance with the two conditions raised by the above-mentioned weekly magazine, but not only China's intellectuals are rare, that is, it is also the same as the Western world. In modern Western, Russell is full of these two conditions. Stevenson is obviously a intellectual. In China, I know that Li Zhuowu is reluctant to represent the representative. Since the late Qing Dynasty, the reading person is not easy to make a copy of the knowledge of intellectuals. Moreover, there is a minority reader in their young ages, and go back to childhood in his later years, it is not intellectual.
Paul Weiss said that the real intellectuals have no groups, and there is no friend. Robert Hutchins believes that a intellectual is a person who tries to pursue truth.
In this way, making a real intellectual, it is necessary to pay for the price of life. Socrate is a typical. A true intellectual must "only ask the right and wrong, no matter everything." He is only responsible for his thoughts and insights. He didn't consider a popular opinion at a time. Of course, he does not consider the fashionable manzen; do not consider the good and evil emotional response to his thoughts; if necessary, whether the result caused by his ideological speech is beneficial to him. A intellectual is not countless from the whole era in order to truth. The others are compliment with him, he is not "spiritual food". The others are not enough to shake his insight. The world's Ronghua is not enough to take his love for the pursuit of truth. The world is persecuted to him, he knows this is a inevitable thing. According to this inference, all talks of the Chinese speech will be able to contribute to the Chinese readers, and those who are fascinating, who cannot be lonely and can't hold the truth, is only a person who reads a book, is not a knowledge.
Hayek said [2], intellectuals are neither a thoughtful idea, and is not an expert in a special department of thought. Typical intellectuals do not have to have special knowledge, nor must they have to be particularly intelligent to spread concepts. The reason why people are qualified to be called intellectuals, because he learned to write, and he can write, and his acceptance of new concepts is coming faster than a class.
Hayieck's statement is not as strict. I have used these two statements. In accordance with Hayieck's statement, the intellectuals in Chinese culture have a lot. The intellectuals defined by the dynasty of the era Week are the essence of intellectuals. Hayiek said that the intellectuals are the knowledge of intellectuals. The former is a striker created by a social and cultural; the latter is the main force created by social culture. Today, intellectuals have a self-contained level of class of special positions. Today's intellectual is not limited to in the Confucius Temple, nor is it limited to school, but is distributed in various departments. Therefore, we now talk about cultural creation, is not narrowly limited to people who take the pen, but broadly expand the outstanding people of all sectors of social culture. In a modern cultural construction, economic workers, industrial workers, agricultural workers, so that military scientists are not less. However, in the inheritance and convenience, it is "the concept of people" to study the knowledge of the professional. All I have to say here is based on such people. Of course, this is not necessarily impossible to include other works in the creation of cultures. Note:
[1] Time, May 21, 1965 [2] f. A, Hayek, The Intellectual and Socialism, In Theinte11ECTUALS, EDITED by George B. de Huszar, i11inois, 1960, p. 372.
(Selected from the "Outlook of Chinese Culture" Chapter 14)
