O que é um intelectual?

Há tempos escrevi no meu Bloco de Notas um texto, "Pensadores, precisam-se", em que aludi á confusão que entre nós se faz entre pensador e simples colunista. Volto ao assunto, e desta vez, porque certamente há leitores que não lêem todos os meus três "blogues", vou escrever isto tanto no Bloco de Notas como nos Apontamentos, porque também tem muito a ver com a educação superior.

Entre vários exemplos de pensadores da minha especial predilecção, referi então Thimoty Garton Ash. É dele um artigo recente para que chamo vivamente a atenção: "Are there British intellectuals? Yes, and they've never had it so good". Vale bem a pena ler também as dezenas de comentários, de alta qualidade. Para abrir o apetite, transcrevo parte da definição de intelectual, segundo TGA:

"Last, and most important, is the characterisation of a cultural role. Collini attempts to pin this down in a careful definition. An intellectual, in this sense, is someone who first attains a level of creative, analytical or scholarly achievement and then uses available media or channels of expression to engage with the broader concerns of wider publics, for some of which he or she then becomes a recognised authority - or at least a recognised figure and voice. My own attempt at defining the role of the intellectual, in a debate with Czech intellectuals some years ago, was not dissimilar: "It is the role of the thinker or writer who engages in public discussion of issues of public policy, in politics in the broadest sense, while deliberately not engaging in the pursuit of power." That last normative caveat seems to me very important, though it is rejected by intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel who have gone into politics with a large P.

Since the 1980s we have come to describe such persons as "public intellectuals", a term imported from the US - as was "highbrow". But if one means by "intellectual" someone who plays the role just described, then "public intellectual" is a pleonasm while "private intellectual" is an oxymoron. A hermit or recluse may be "a bit of an intellectual", but engagement with a wider public is the defining feature of an intellectual in this sense. The story is complicated by the fact that you may reach a wider public only after your death. Only 11 people attended Karl Marx's funeral, but he became one of the most influential political intellectuals of all time. There are, so to speak, posthumous publics."

Reparem na frase "while deliberately not engaging in the pursuit of power". Se entendermos "power" em sentido lato, influência política, clubes de elogio mútuo, narcisismo, favoritismos cruzados, dependência dos vários poderes, etc., então volto ao que escrevi sobre muitos dos nossos opinadores.

A terminar, mais uma vez o agradecimento à DK, infatigável em fornecer-me informação importante.