11

INTELLECTUALS , history of the Concept

Professor Christophe Charle 124 bd Blanqui France 75013 Paris
76 INTELLECTUALS , history of the Concept

The substantive “ intellectuels ” appeared in France in the 1890s' and was largely
diffused thanks to the polemics around the Dreyfus affair (“ manifeste des intellectuels ”
published after the famous J’accuse by Zola on January 13th 1898 in L’Aurore), not only
in France but also with longer or lesser delay in whole Europe and even in America
(North and South)(Drouin 1994). Two exceptions existed to this large diffusion of the
new concept : Germany and Russia where existed former and kin notions Intelligenz and
intelligentsia already used as social or political denominations (Muü ller 1971). Previous
uses of the English equivalent “ intellectuals ” are attested too before the 1890s but they
seem to have been too rare to know a broad social circulation (Williams 1976). In the
same way, in America, “ intellectuals ” became a common notion only in connection with
newspapers commentaries on the Dreyfus affair (Bender 1987).
To understand this new terminology with a European or even international diffusion it
is necessary to remind the issues of this historical moment. What was at stake in this
crisis was not only a political problem but the affirmation of a new group, defender of
universal values against the reason of State (Charle 1990). These values justified that
writers, artists, scholars, students, members of liberal professions and so on, intervened
on a collective basis in the political debate, although they were not themselves, for the
main part, professional politicians. The other specificity of this moment is that, in other
countries, this same cause or other similar ones favoured the intervention of
intellectuals, but generally on various patterns and with different content. Even if social
sciences have debated since that period at a theoretical level, trying to find universal
characteristics underlying this new vocabulary (Shils 1972), the emergence of
intellectuals cannot be assimilated to the apparition of a new social group as some
historians or sociologists suggest it (Perkin 1989, Bell 1973). Therefore it is necessary to
treat the specifities of meaning of intellectuals, intellectuels, Intellektuelle, intellettuali,
intelectuales, and so on in each specific geographical and historical context.

The French case

In France, the neologism "intellectuels" began to be used, even before the Dreyfus affair,
in avant-garde circles in the 1890's, as a social mark. The "intellectuel" was a sort of
mandarin, who despised politics and wanted to distinguish himself from middle class,
dominant writers and academics. "Intellectuel" was a sort of superlative of what
Flaubert meant with the word "artist" (Bourdieu 1992).
But, since the neologism was widely used during the Dreyfus affair the initial social
meaning was replaced by a strong emphasis upon the political acception. In the first
phase of the Dreyfus affair, the "intellectuels" were an equivalent of "dreyfusards" and
afterwards when antidreyfusard intellectuals intervened too in a collective way, the word
"intellectuels" began to define a special category of people who defended political
positions with arguments of social authority, i. e. their competence as thinkers,
historians, scientists, professors, writers or artists.
In France, the birth of "intellectuels" is generated first by a growing inadequacy of
ancient cultural patterns in the new situation linked to the cultural expansion in the last
decades of the XIXth century. Intellectual professions far more numerous now defend at
once their social and symbolic status so that collective attitudes appear breaking with
older individualistic habits. But this defense may be argued on two different grounds: on
intellectual and pure values or on professional and pragmatic issues. Against avant-garde
writers or academics, militating generally for the first option, appear, during the same
period, professional associations. The first use of the term intellectuels is reserved to the
first type of elitist fraternity. It will be the germ of its political transformation like for the
Russian intelligentsia a bit earlier. As in Russia too, reformed universities played a great
role in the process of emergence and mobilization of intellectuals.
The second paradoxical factor of ideological and political change, was the precocious
crisis of parliamentary democracy in France. After the establishment of the Third
Republic, apolitism predominated within intellectuals as if the end of history was
already reached. A new politicization occurred with the crisis of official parties and the
emergence of extremist factions, with which avant-garde writers sympathized (in
particular anarchism and, to a lesser degree, socialism). This new trend prepared what is
the specificity of Dreyfus affair, the invention of a new relationship towards politics
outside the traditional political field. Intellectuals in this new terminology pretended to
practice politics in an autonomous way, different both from the official and the former
political practice. This was possible because the legitimacy of Republican elites laid on
the same bases as the legitimacy of intellectuals themselves, i. e. upon merit and
individual talent. But in so far as these elites, after different crises and scandals
(Boulangism, Panama scandal, and so on) appeared to be incompetent or corrupted,
intellectuals, preserved from these faults, might pretend to offer an alternative elite
necessary to lead an authentical democracy.
Students, avant-garde writers and even younger generations of academics, before the
Dreyfus affair, manifested these new revendications of being the true representants of
the people against politicians The State itself, with its growing intolerance towards
literary innovations or extremist parties (especially anarchism), contributed to the
mobilization of authors against juridical prosecutions through collective manifestos just
before the Dreyfus affair.
Dreyfus affair, at this respect, presents both a true continuity with preceding years and a
break. Afterwards, the main following mobilizations of intellectuals will obey to the same
collective rites and values (Ory and Sirinelli 1986). Its founding importance was to prove
that this type of mobilization might lead to real political consequences. This twofold
mobilization (of dreyfusards and antidreyfusards) was new and defined, on both sides of
the political spectrum, a general definition of intellectuals which was not limited to
leftist intellectuals. In other countries on the contrary, the equivalent of “ intellectuels ”
are generally speaking confined to one side of the political spectrum.

The peculiarities of English intellectuals

By contrast with France, the traditional view is that there are no intellectuals at all in the
continental sense in Britain. Since one or two decades, British historians and sociologists
reacted against this strong anti-intellectual bias. Some authors speak now of an
intelligentsia, i. e. an elitist avant-garde, others of "public moralists" which enhances the
role of dominant and academic intellectuals or of a "professional class" which
assimilates intellectual professions to a new class (Heyck 1982, Collini 1991, Allen 1986,
Perkin 1989). A comparative approach shows that two specific factors may explain the
strong dissimilarity with France, in spite of the proximity of economic and political
conditions in intellectual life : the persistant elitism of English university life and the
relative proximity between intellectual professions and political elites. Established elites,
even if they were obliged to reform and enlarge the political system at the end of the
nineteenth century were not contested as illegitimate power elite, as they were in
France. In fact, English dominant intellectuals shared mainly the same values and
background as gentlemen and political leaders because they were too largely issued
from the same public schools and universities.
In front of these dominant intellectuals, appeared, in the last decades of the century,
new types of intellectuals who presented outsiders profiles. The best known were the
Fabians who could not attend the best colleges and universities and had to find their way
through journalism, literature, new academic institutions (e.g. the London School of
Economics) or militant politics.
But these avant-gardes were very different from contemporary French avant-gardes :
they limited their intervention to one main field: for the Fabians social and political
questions, for esthetes, esthetic life, and so on. They pretended to create a voluntary
structure and to influence indirectly the official sphere, not at all to destroy or affront it
directly.
Even when mobilization occurred on a larger scale, as during the Boers war, English
intellectuals used the official means of actions and respected legal frameworks. Finally,
the main difference laid on the very different function of State in England and in
Continental Europe. In England, militant intellectuals endeavoured to enlarge its role to
correct social injustice whereas in France or even more in Germany, intellectuals tried
first to weaken its authoritarian trends.

The German case

Even if the word Intellektuelle, derived from French, continues almost till now to bear a
derogatory nuance (Bering 1978), their German genuine equivalents Intelligenz,
Gebildete, Geistige, are used since a long time but do not imply, as the French term the
same political or social behaviors.
This early appearance of the question of "intellectuals" may be shown through the
recurring discussion about the academic proletariate (first in the Vormaü rz period, then
in the 1880’s, finally in the Weimar period : Titze 1992), with the ideological debates
inside the social-democratic party about the place of Intelligenz (Gilcher-Holthey 1986)
and also with the Antisemitimusstreit in 1879. This last famous polemics about Jews
position in German society between the conservative historian Treitschke and his liberal
colleague Mommsen, former Forty-eighter, appears very near in its argumentation to
that opposing French Dreyfusards and Antidreyfusards. As twenty years later in France,
the rights of minorities and, in particular, of the individual and the Jews lay at the center
of this debate. Other affairs inside universities, like Arons case or Spahn case, or outside
of them, like the mobilization against the lex Heinze (1900), show too that the debates
about intellectual autonomy were as crucial in Germany as in France and succeeded
several times to mobilize some groups of intellectuals.
But, in all cases, mobilization inside the intellectual field was limited to some regions, to
specific groups and to particular issues which did not put into question the structure of
the State itself as in France. A mere political explanation (an Empire opposed to a
Republic) is not enough. What was specific and new in the Dreyfus case was the
convergence of different intellectual groups about common values. In Germany, the
corporatist ethos remained stronger even about general issues; free intellectuals and
State intellectuals (mainly university professors) despised each other. Academics began
at that time to live apart from the political sphere and prefered a general cultural
function as State or Bildung’s defenders through different associations. Only a small
minority of free intellectuals and very few in the Academe put into question dominant
elites or national causes.
The Gebildete assumed that they represented the true public opinion and the best
interpreters of general causes but they intended to remain in their own field in ordrer to
best serve their country. This German intellectual and geographical fragmentation
hinders the linkage between local or professional struggles for autonomy (Huü binger and
Mommsen 1993, Ringer 1969, 1992).

Southern Europe
In Spain as in Italy, the local equivalent of intellectuels seem to be in use also in the
1890s in connection or even before the Dreyfus case. The French example was very
influent for the Spanish and Italian intellectuals because French cultural influence in the
two peninsule wass already very strong since the French Revolution and because the
inner social and political situations of Spanish and Italian intellectuals present some
analogies with the French context : as their French homologues they share a general
impression that their countries go through a deep crisis (economic backwardness,
military defeat in Spain, emigration, social riots and parliamentary corruption in Italy)
which implie some sort of public intervention to find some issue. The strong
anticlericalism and antimilitarism, the link between intellectuals and extreme left
movements, the emergence of a new nationalism in both countries recall too the French
debates of the turn of the century (Serrano C & Salauü n S 1988). Obvious Differences exist
too : the weaker public audience of intellectuals depending on the cultural backwardness
of popular classes (analphabetism) and the persistence of a large sector of opinion
hostile to the cultural inheritance of Enlightenment among Catholics very influent in
both countries and an overproduction of laureati in Italy than other advanced countries
in Europe which could explain a strong comitment of academics in extremist parties
(Barbagli M., 1974, 1982, Michels R, 1921).
Despite of the specificities of the different parts of Europe, the different types of
intellectuals emerging all along the last century, illustrate some sort of convergence at a
transnational level. The most significative of the European cultural way is that each
national debate has some European echo from Russia to France or even Britain.

Twentieth Century changes of meanings

The intertwining of the sociological and the political of ethical viewpoints was
perpetually reiterated during the history of French intellectuals after the Dreyfus affair.
A new sociologization of the word occurred with the attacks against previous
dreyfusards in the pre-world-war period. The "parti intellectuel" to use Peé guy's
expression was charged by their former allies (for example Georges Sorel) for having
used the political struggle in order to conquer eminent positions of power. For their
critics this political party constitued in fact a social cluster of arrivists, a new elite of
mandarins backing upon leftist politicians (Prochasson 1992).
Between the two World Wars, there was a revival of the political and ideological
emphasis on the meaning of the word during what has been called the Franco-french
war between the right-wing "parti de l'intelligence" and the left-wing "intellectuels de
gauche". This trend is enhanced because at the same time extreme left movements tried
to restrict the notion to a sociological sense. The influence of Soviet marxism may be
found here in which "intellectuels" become a synonym for the Russian word
"intelligentsia" which is nearer a sociological concept after the October revolution than
the term "intellectuels" is in French. "Intellectuels" in the phraseology of the Communist
Parties are assimilated to a social group in order to deny them any political autonomy
and oblige them to define their political attitude within the limits of the marxist
framework of society and renounce their own vision which is, in the French political
tradition, far more linked with the French Revolution legacy and the defense of Human
Rights (Benda 1927). This intertwining of two traditions after the thirties explain why
leftist intellectuals used social concepts to attack their rightist opponents while,
reversely, rightist intellectuals laid the stress on the idealist conception of the intellectual
role : they opposed themselves to materialism (i. e. leftist intellectuals influenced by
marxism) instead of only taking the defense of tradition as before (Sapiro 1999).
The decline of marxism in the intelligentsia and the excess of sociological terrorism in
intellectual struggles during the fifties and sixties (Boschetti, Verdeè s-Leroux) explain
why French contemporary intellectual life is dominated by some sort of revival of the
primitive meaning of the word "intellectuel". This complete historical cycle is one of the
origins of the renewed interest for the study of intellectuals as political and social actors
by French and foreign scholars in the eighties and nineties (Bourdieu, 1979, 1992 Ory
Sirinelli 1986, Trebitsch, Jennings 1993, Julliard Winock)

Antiintellectualism which was so present in England and Germany before the First world
war seems to decline somewhat since the mobilization of all types of intellectuals
(scholars as well as writers or journalists) in the union sacreé e for propaganda or
practical applications devoted to National Defense confered them a new importance in
all political contexts. After the First world war the democratization in both Britain and
Weimar Germany places intellectuals in a political context wear similar to the French
one. The growing influence of left parties, of marxist ideas, of international issues
(communism, fascism, pacifism, fear for a new war) gave birth to transnational debates
among European intellectuals (or even American if the case of New York intellectuals
may be included). This does not mean that the specific national traditions are forgotten.
Even if notions like Intellektuelle or intelligentsia are more used than before in the
German or English public debate, they never obtained the general influence which they
enjoyed in France, Italy or Spain (Stark 1984, Bering 1987). Even innovative sociologists
such as Karl Mannheim continued to use in general the older vocabulary to express their
new conceptions of a free-floating intelligentsia (freischwebende Intelligenz, Geistige :
Mannheim 1927). R. Michels’ contribution on Intellectuals in the Encyclopedia of Social
Sciences (1932) is rather focussed on the past and presents a rather pessimistic view of
this category assimilated to an unstable or range social group. The anti-intellectualism of
the Nazi movement and Regime and the large emigration of progressist or Jewish
intellectuals out of Germany and Central Europe stopped for a long period this timid
convergence with the Latin tradition of intellectuals.
Another effect of the political transformations of the interwar period is the changing
meaning of the Russian equivalent of intellectuals i.e. intelligentsia. In the Soviet
vocabulary intelligentsai was denied any political autonomy and reduced to a
professional group in charge of functional activities defined by the political authorities.
The end or the decay of the different fascist or communist regimes in the second half of
th Twentieth Century gave a new actuality to the oppositional notion of intellectuals in
particular in Central and Eastern Europe (the “ dissenters ” which recall the XIXth-
century meaning of intelligentsia). In Southern Europe, in Africa, Asia or Latin America
where revolutionary intellectuals or militants for the Human Rights rejuvenated the
XIXth-century European tradition of oppositional intellectuals wether in its marxist,
leninist or social-democratic version or in its dreyfusard and humanist variant. The
importance of young intellectuals (students for example) in a lot of emerging countries
during the decolonization phase reminds also of the similar national movement in
Germany, Italy or Center-east Europe before 1848.
All these convergences explain why the historical notion of intellectuals continues to be
at the centre of many historical, sociological or philosophical works or reflexions trying
to find general or transhistorical definitions of this term. To precise all these debates
would ask a broad picture of the main currents of social and historical sciences in so far
as each specific definition of intellectuals by actual theoreticians or historians is linked
to their general conceptions of history and society.

Bibliography
Allen P 1986 The Meanings of "an Intellectual": Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century
English Usage. University of Toronto Quarterly, 55: 342-358.
Barbagli M 1974 Disoccupazione intellettuale e sistemo scolastico in Italia. Il Mulino,
Bologna [1982 Educating for Unemployment: Politics, Labor Markets, and the School
System Italy, 1859-1973. Columbia University Press, New York]
Bell D 1973 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, A Venture in Social Forecasting. Basic
Books New York
Benda J 1927 La trahison des clercs. Grasset, Paris, [1928 The great betrayal. Routledge,
London]
Bender Th 1987 New York Intellect : a History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from
1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time. Knopf and Johns Hopkins U.P., New York,
Baltimore
Bering D 1978 Die Intellektuellen. Geschichte eines Schimpfwortes. Klett, Suttgart
Boschetti A 1985 Sartre et les Temps modernes, Minuit Paris [1988 The Intellectual
Enterprise : Sartre and Les Temps Modernes. Northwestern University Press, Evanston,
IL]
Bourdieu P 1992 Les reè gles de l’art, . Geneè se et structure du champ litteé raire. EÉ ditions du
Seuil Paris [1996 The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Polity
Press, Cambridge]
Charle C 1990 Naissance des “ intellectuels ” (1880-1900). EÉ ditions de Minuit, Paris
Charle C 1994 Les Intellectuels en Europe au XIXeè me sieè cle, essai d’histoire compareé e.
EÉ ditions du Seuil, Paris
Collini S 1991 Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850-
1930. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Collini S 1993 Intellectuals in Britain and France in the Twentieth Century: Confusions,
Contrasts and Convergence? in Jennings J (ed.) Intellectuals in Twentieth Century France,
Mandarins and Samurais. St Martin's Press, London, New York: 199-225
Drouin M 1994 L’Affaire Dreyfus de A aè Z. Flammarion, Paris
Gilcher-Holthey I 1986 Das Mandat des Intellektuellen: Karl Kautsky und die
Sozialdemokratie. Siedler, Berlin
Granjon M-C, Racine N, Trebitsch M 1997 Histoire compareé e des intellectuels. IHTP,
CNRS, Paris
Huü binger G & Mommsen W (ed.) 1993 Intellektuelle im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Fischer
Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt/M
Jacoby R 1987 The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. Basic
Books, New York
Mannheim K 1929 Ideologie und Utopie. F. Cohen, Bonn [1936 Ideology and utopia, an
introduction to the sociology of knowledge, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & C°, Harcourt,
Brace and C°, London, New York]
Michels R 1921 Le Proleé tariat et la bourgeoisie dans le mouvement socialiste italien.
Giard Paris
Michels R 1932 Intellectuals in: Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. vol. 8, Mac Millan,
New York: 118-126
Muü ller O W 1971 Intelligencija. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte eines politischen
Schlagwortes. Athenaü um, Frankfurt/M
Ory P and Sirinelli J-F 1986 Les intellectuels en France de l’affaire Dreyfus aè nos jours.
Colin, Paris
Perkin H 1989 The Rise of Professional Society, England since 1880. Routledge, New
York, London
Prochasson C 1992 Les Intellectuels, le socialisme et la guerre (1900-1938). EÉ ditions du
Seuil Paris
Ringer F K 1969 The Decline of the German Mandarins. Harvard U. P., Cambridge (Mass.)
[1989 n. ed. University Press of New England, Hanover]
Sapiro G 1999 La guerre des eé crivains 1940-1953. Fayard, Paris
Serrano C and Salauü n S (ed.) 1988 1900 en Espagne, essai d'histoire culturelle. Presses
universitaires de Bordeaux, Bordeaux
Shils E 1972 The Intellectuals and the powers, and other essays. University of Chicago
Press, Chicago
Stark M (ed.) 1984 Deutsche Intellektuelle 1910-1933, Aufrufe, Pamphlete,
Betrachtungen. Verlag Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg
Titze H 1990 Der Akademikerzyklus.Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Goettingen
Trebitsch M and Granjon M.-C. 1998, Pour une histoire compareé e des intellectuels.
Complexe, Bruxelles
Wald A M 1987 The New York Intellectuals. The Rise and Decline of the Antistalinist Left
from the 1930s to the 1980s. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
Williams R 1976 Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford U.P., Oxford
Christophe Charle professor of Contemporary history at Paris-I-University (Pantheé on-
Sorbonne)