Intellectuals And Society, by Thomas Sowell

When I brought this book inside the place where I live, my landlord/roommate commented that I was an intellectual.  And while that is certainly true the sense that I enjoy and do well at the acquisition of intellectual knowledge, the way that the author uses this sense refers mainly to those who are part of an intellectual class based on their professions and their isolation from accountability to facts or political pressures.  As someone whose intellect has always had a practical bent, the author notes that such people as engineers and doctors and other empirically intelligent people are not the sort of people he is writing about and critiquing.  And that is good to know.  It’s always nice to know when one is reading a book that is going to be harsh on intellectuals that one is not going to be included in that criticism, and that is generally the case, even if as a blogger I could be considered at least a public intellectual of some sort, often writing far beyond my expertise if hopefully rarely beyond my competence.  The people that the author is writing about, though, are likely not going to be very happy about it, although I don’t think the author minds that at all.

This book is a bit more than 300 pages and is divided into 9 relatively large chapters that cover a large scope of time starting in the late 18th century and going on to today, focusing on the ways that intellectuals have done a great deal of harm to society without suffering harm to their own credibility and legitimacy accordingly.  The author begins with a discussion about the difference between intellect and intellectuals, making sure to define his point so that the author is aware of the people he is writing about when he speaks of intellectuals, namely those who produce ideas whose relationship to the real world is not particularly relevant to the status of the person who came up with the ideas (1).  After that the author discusses the difference between knowledge and notions (2) as well as the relationship between intellectuals and economics, which is that dismal science dealing with the practical results of the behavior of individuals, firms, and governments (3). After that the author discusses the sort of social visions that intellectuals have tended to have (4), and the way that reality is viewed as optional by the media and academia, where intellectuals and their followers tend to concentrate (5).  After this there is a look at intellectuals and the law (6), before two chapters look at the relationship between intellectuals and war (7,8), closing with a discussion about the relationship of intellectuals and society (9).

What is it that makes intellectuals so harmful to society?  It is not the use of intellect, because those whose intelligence has a decidedly practical turn, like doctors and engineers and others, have tended to greatly benefit humanity through the preservation of life and making it easier to do things.  What does appear to be decisive is the lack of accountability that intellectuals have.  If they support bloody dictators while hypocritically criticizing their own nations, they do not suffer a loss of face when the horrors of those dictators are made known.  If their support of pacifist disarmament leads their country to be vulnerable to attack and other citizens pay the price, they are safe from consequences for their harm unless their nation does particularly poorly like the French in WWII.  If intellectuals urge policies that will be counter to their avowed aims, they will have the comfort of their good intentions when things go wrong, and may even resent those who practically deal with problems, just without their own ideological perspective.  How are we to make intellectuals more accountable, so that we may cultivate the best ones in our societies, whose ideas will lead to the well-being of society rather than good intentions that pave the road to hell as is so often the case?