Artikel

Intellectuelen en democratische cultuur

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Abstract

Intellectuals and democratic culture - This essay is a polemic with Tibor Huszars Abriss der Geschichte der Intelligenz (1988). Assuming the historicity and culture dependence of intellectuals the proposition will be defended that a study on intellectuals can really be simultaneously historical and comparative as well as theoretical and integrative. This results in a historical-sociological treatise on the sociogenesis and transformation of social chances of intellectuals, viewed in a modernizing western civilization. Special attention is focused on the interrelatedness of intellectuals and culture. For this purpose the construction of analytical types serves as a heuristic expedient. A pair of types, clustered together, directs the analysis. It concerns, on the one hand, the intellectual of the aristocratic type that corresponds with a premodern aristocratic culture and, on the other hand, the intellectual of the democratic type that originates in the institutionalization of a democratic pattern of culture. In constructing these types we intend to catch the historical drift that we recognize in the intellectual’s history. Societies characterized by agrarian-military regimes and strong hierarchical social relations gradually give way to societies of which the distinguishing features are a combination of capitalism and egalitarian principles. This cultural drift changes the social role of intellectuals. The modern age, therefore, generates a new kind of intellectual, the intellectual of the democratic type. This type distinguishes itself from the older aristocratic one by an independent self-image and a selfprophesied social criticizing task, a mission made possible by the development of a market of intellectual professions.

How to Cite:

Dielissen, G., (1989) “Intellectuelen en democratische cultuur”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 34(4), 285–314. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95024