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(2016) The new public intellectual, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Bringing intellect to the soapbox

an exchange

Simon Critchley

pp. 175-187

Simon Critchley. I think the idea of a public intellectual is a pleonasm in the sense in which, intellectual, by definition, means someone who intervenes in the public realm. The Dreyfus Affair which ran for an awful long time in the early twentieth century in France, and obviously Émile Zola's intervention letter "J"accuse,"— that's where we get the modern category of intellectual. I"ve never really understood what is gained by adding public to it, so intellectual, by definition to me, is public.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-58162-4_11

Full citation:

Critchley, S. (2016)., Bringing intellect to the soapbox: an exchange, in P. Hitchcock (ed.), The new public intellectual, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 175-187.

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