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90-606: Anatole France ( French: [anatɔl fʁɑ̃s] ; born François-Anatole Thibault [frɑ̃swa anatɔl tibo] ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters . He was a member of the Académie Française , and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by

180-488: A pseudo-scientific justification for the crimes of the state . In "An Interview with Milton Friedman" (1974), the American economist Milton Friedman said that businessmen and intellectuals are enemies of capitalism : most intellectuals believed in socialism while businessmen expected economic privileges. In his essay "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?" (1998), the American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick of

270-466: A concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by either rejecting, producing or extending an ideology , and by defending a system of values . The term "man of letters" derives from the French term belletrist or homme de lettres but is not synonymous with "an academic". A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society in

360-560: A man with a donkey's head. The Greek practice of interpretatio graeca , ascribing the gods of another people's pantheon to corresponding ones in one's own, had been adopted by the Egyptians after their Hellenisation ; during the process of which they had identified Seth with Typhon , a snake-monster, which roars like a lion. The story of the Exodus , featured in the Hebrew Bible , speaks of

450-520: A nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament". France is also widely believed to be the model for narrator Marcel's literary idol Bergotte in Marcel Proust 's In Search of Lost Time . The son of a bookseller, France, a bibliophile , spent most of his life around books. His father's bookstore specialized in books and papers on the French Revolution and

540-566: A patribus genitus , lit.   'the child of fathers'. A theory proposed by Matter in 1828 identified the name as descending from Hebrew : ילדא , romanized :  yāldā , lit.   'child' and from Hebrew : בהות , romanized :  bahot , a supposed plural form of Hebrew : בוהו , romanized :  bōhu , lit.   'emptiness, darkness'. Matter however interpreted it to mean 'chaos', thus translating Yaldaboath as "child of darkness [...] an element of chaos". This etymology

630-550: A plural noun to refer, usually with a figurative or ironic intent, to a collection of people who might be identified in terms of their intellectual inclinations or pretensions." In early 19th-century Britain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term clerisy , the intellectual class responsible for upholding and maintaining the national culture, the secular equivalent of the Anglican clergy. Likewise, in Tsarist Russia, there arose

720-415: A single corrupted text from 1859, with its listed translation having been transposed from the reading of an earlier etymology, whose explanation seemingly equated " darkness " and "chaos" when translating an unattested supposed plural form of Hebrew : בוהו , romanized :  bōhu . The first etymology was advanced in 1575 by Feuardentius , supposedly translating it from Hebrew to mean Latin :

810-403: A social class, Jean-Paul Sartre said that intellectuals are the moral conscience of their age; that their moral and ethical responsibilities are to observe the socio-political moment, and to freely speak to their society, in accordance with their consciences. The British historian Norman Stone said that the intellectual social class misunderstand the reality of society and so are doomed to

900-403: A status group they must be autonomous in order to be credible as intellectuals: It is relatively easy to demonstrate autonomy, if you come from a wealthy or [an] aristocratic background. You simply need to disown your status and champion the poor and [the] downtrodden [...]. [A]utonomy is much harder to demonstrate if you come from a poor or proletarian background [...], [thus] calls to join

990-524: A term which is sometimes applied today. The word intellectual is found in Indian scripture Mahabharata in the Bachelorette meeting (Swayamvara Sava) of Draupadi . Immediately after Arjuna and Raja-Maharaja (kings-emperors) came to the meeting, Nipuna Buddhijibina (perfect intellectuals) appeared at the meeting. In Imperial China in the period from 206 BC until AD 1912, the intellectuals were

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1080-475: A time when literacy was rare. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term Belletrist(s) came to be applied to the literati : the French participants in—sometimes referred to as "citizens" of—the Republic of Letters , which evolved into the salon , a social institution, usually run by a hostess, meant for the edification, education, and cultural refinement of the participants. In the late 19th century, when literacy

1170-511: A wild ass. After the emergence of Christianity the same charge was also repeated against its devotees. Most famously so in the earliest known depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus , the Alexamenos graffito , where a Christian by the name of Alexamenos is shown worshipping a donkey-headed crucified god. According to Litwa, this tradition forms the basis for the development of Gnostic beliefs about Yaldabaoth. Gnosticism originated during

1260-455: A worthy one. It was good enough to be praised and imitated in 18th century Europe. Nevertheless, it has given China a tremendous handicap in their transition from government by men to government by law, and personal considerations in Chinese government have been a curse. In Joseon Korea (1392–1910), the intellectuals were the literati , who knew how to read and write, and had been designated, as

1350-455: Is existentially -based", the intellectuals, who create and preserve knowledge, are "spokesmen for different social groups, and articulate particular social interests". That intellectuals occur in each social class and throughout the right-wing , the centre and the left-wing of the political spectrum and that as a social class the "intellectuals view themselves as autonomous from the ruling class " of their society. Addressing their role as

1440-517: Is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy . The Czech intellectual Václav Havel said that politics and intellectuals can be linked, but that moral responsibility for the intellectual's ideas, even when advocated by a politician, remains with the intellectual. Therefore, it is best to avoid utopian intellectuals who offer 'universal insights' to resolve the problems of political economy with public policies that might harm and that have harmed civil society; that intellectuals be mindful of

1530-507: Is how Chilean intellectuals worked to reestablish democracy within the right-wing , neoliberal governments of the military dictatorship of 1973–1990 , the Pinochet régime allowed professional opportunities for some liberal and left-wing social scientists to work as politicians and as consultants in effort to realize the theoretical economics of the Chicago Boys , but their access to power

1620-641: Is the son of Sophia , the personification of wisdom according to Gnosticism, with whom he contends. By creatively becoming matter in goodness and simplicity, Sophia created the imperfect Yaldabaoth, who has no knowledge of the other aeons. From his mother he received the powers of light, but he used them for evil. Sophia rules the Ogdoas, the Demiurge rules the Hebdomas. Yaldabaoth created six more archons and other fellows. The angels he created rebelled against Yaldabaoth. To keep

1710-403: Is to communicate the complex and specialized knowledge of the scientist to the general public. He argued that intellectuals were attracted to socialism or social democracy because the socialists offered "broad visions; the spacious comprehension of the social order, as a whole, which a planned system promises" and that such broad-vision philosophies "succeeded in inspiring the imagination of

1800-417: Is unquestionable that he was attacked partly from political motives". Man of letters An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking , research , and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the world of culture , either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend

1890-491: Is without a heart and without entrails. When serving the powers of money, it is pitiless and inhuman." In 1920, he gave his support to the newly founded French Communist Party . In his book The Red Lily , France famously wrote, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread." The English writer George Orwell defended France and declared that his work remained very readable, and that "it

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1980-520: The Scholar-officials ("Scholar-gentlemen"), who were civil servants appointed by the Emperor of China to perform the tasks of daily governance. Such civil servants earned academic degrees by means of imperial examination , and were often also skilled calligraphers or Confucian philosophers. Historian Wing-Tsit Chan concludes that: Generally speaking, the record of these scholar-gentlemen has been

2070-655: The intelligentsia (1860s–1870s), who were the status class of white-collar workers. For Germany, the theologian Alister McGrath said that "the emergence of a socially alienated, theologically literate, antiestablishment lay intelligentsia is one of the more significant phenomena of the social history of Germany in the 1830s". An intellectual class in Europe was socially important, especially to self-styled intellectuals, whose participation in society's arts, politics, journalism, and education—of either nationalist , internationalist , or ethnic sentiment—constitute "vocation of

2160-657: The Cato Institute argued that intellectuals become embittered leftists because their superior intellectual work, much rewarded at school and at university, are undervalued and underpaid in the capitalist market economy . Thus, intellectuals turn against capitalism despite enjoying more socioeconomic status than the average person. The economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book Intellectuals and Society (2010) that intellectuals, who are producers of knowledge, not material goods, tend to speak outside their own areas of expertise, and yet expect social and professional benefits from

2250-545: The French Revolution , about a true-believing follower of Maximilien Robespierre and his contribution to the bloody events of the Reign of Terror of 1793–94. It is a wake-up call against political and ideological fanaticism and explores various other philosophical approaches to the events of the time. The Revolt of the Angels ( La Revolte des Anges , 1914) is often considered France's most profound and ironic novel. Loosely based on

2340-685: The Neuilly-sur-Seine Old Communal Cemetery near Paris. On 31 May 1922, France's entire works were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books") of the Catholic Church . He regarded this as a "distinction". This Index was abolished in 1966. In 1877, France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville, a granddaughter of Jean-Urbain Guérin , a miniaturist who painted Louis XVI . Their daughter Suzanne

2430-636: The chungin (the "middle people"), in accordance with the Confucian system. Socially, they constituted the petite bourgeoisie , composed of scholar-bureaucrats (scholars, professionals, and technicians) who administered the dynastic rule of the Joseon dynasty. The term public intellectual describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs discourse of society, in addition to an academic career. Regardless of their academic fields or professional expertise, public intellectuals address and respond to

2520-539: The fall of man through the serpent. By eating the forbidden fruit , Adam and Eve became wise and rejected Yaldabaoth. Eventually, Yaldabaoth expelled them from the ethereal region, the Paradise , as punishment. Yaldabaoth continuously attempted to deprive human beings of the gift of the spark of light which he had unwittingly lost to them, or to keep them in bondage. As punishments, he tried to make humanity acknowledge him as God. Because of their lack of worship, he caused

2610-552: The halo effect derived from possessing professional expertise. In relation to other professions, public intellectuals are socially detached from the negative and unintended consequences of public policy derived from their ideas. Sowell gives the example of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), who advised the British government against national rearmament in the years before the Second World War . Yaldabaoth The etymology of

2700-577: The highest, unknowable God , and the Demiurge , "creator" of the material universe. Gnostics considered the most essential part of the process of salvation to be this personal knowledge, in contrast to faith as an outlook in their worldview along with faith in the ecclesiastical authority . In Gnosticism, the biblical serpent in the Garden of Eden was praised and thanked for bringing knowledge ( gnosis ) to Adam and Eve and thereby freeing them from

2790-403: The intelligentsia , a status class organised either by ideology (e.g., conservatism , fascism , socialism , liberalism , reactionary , revolutionary , democratic , communism ), or by nationality (American intellectuals, French intellectuals, Ibero–American intellectuals, et al. ). The term intelligentsiya originated from Tsarist Russia ( c.  1860s –1870s), where it denotes

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2880-509: The malevolent Demiurge's control. Gnostic Christian doctrines rely on a dualistic cosmology that implies the eternal conflict between good and evil, and a conception of the serpent as the liberating savior and bestower of knowledge to humankind opposed to the Demiurge or creator god , identified with the Yahweh from the Hebrew Bible. Some Gnostic Christians (such as Marcionites ) considered

2970-454: The names of God in Judaism . Thus he rendered Yald' Abaoth as 'begetter of Sabaoth'. Black objects to this, because Sabaoth is the name of one of Yaldaboth's sons in some Gnostic texts. Instead he suggests the second noun to be Jewish Aramaic : בהתייה, romanized : behūṯā , lit . 'shame'. Which is cognate with Hebrew : בושה , romanized :  bōšeṯ , a term used to replace

3060-465: The normative problems of society, and, as such, are expected to be impartial critics who can "rise above the partial preoccupation of one's own profession—and engage with the global issues of truth , judgment, and taste of the time". In Representations of the Intellectual (1994), Edward Saïd said that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on

3150-764: The occult , and in Les Opinions de Jérôme Coignard (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the fin de siècle . He was elected to the Académie Française in 1896. France took a part in the Dreyfus affair . He signed Émile Zola 's manifesto supporting Alfred Dreyfus , a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage . France wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret . France's later works include Penguin Island ( L'Île des Pingouins , 1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting

3240-572: The proto-orthodox Early Church Fathers . Yaldabaoth is mentioned mainly in the Archontic, Sethian, and Ophite writings of Gnostic literature , most of which have been discovered in the Nag Hammadi library . In the Apocryphon of John , "Yaldabaoth" is the first of three names of the domineering archon , along with Saklas and Samael . In Pistis Sophia he has lost his claim to rulership and, in

3330-471: The social stratum of those possessing intellectual formation (schooling, education), and who were Russian society's counterpart to the German Bildungsbürgertum and to the French bourgeoisie éclairée , the enlightened middle classes of those realms. In Marxist philosophy , the social class function of the intellectuals (the intelligentsia ) is to be the source of progressive ideas for

3420-417: The "Who?", the "How?" and the "Why?" of the social, economic and political status quo —the ideological totality of society—and its practical, revolutionary application to the transformation of their society. The Italian communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) developed Karl Marx 's conception of the intelligentsia to include political leadership in the public sphere. That because "all knowledge

3510-423: The "educated representatives of the propertied classes", of "revolutionary socialist intellectuals", such as were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . The Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács (1885–1971) identified the intelligentsia as the privileged social class who provide revolutionary leadership. By means of intelligible and accessible interpretation, the intellectuals explain to the workers and peasants

3600-570: The 20th century, the term intellectual acquired positive connotations of social prestige , derived from possessing intellect and intelligence , especially when the intellectual's activities exerted positive consequences in the public sphere and so increased the intellectual understanding of the public, by means of moral responsibility, altruism , and solidarity , without resorting to the manipulations of demagoguery , paternalism and incivility (condescension). The sociologist Frank Furedi said that "Intellectuals are not defined according to

3690-557: The Christian understanding of the War in Heaven , it tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Bored because Bishop d'Esparvieu is sinless, Arcade begins reading the bishop's books on theology and becomes an atheist. He moves to Paris, meets a woman, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off, joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels, and meets

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3780-504: The Devil, who realizes that if he overthrew God, he would become just like God. Arcade realizes that replacing God with another is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth ." "Ialdabaoth", according to France, is God's secret name and means "the child who wanders". He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died on 13 October 1924 and is buried in

3870-697: The Egyptians and not commonly worshipped, in large part due to his role as the god of foreigners. From at least 200 BCE onward, a tradition developed in the Graeco-Egyptian Ptolemaic Kingdom which identified Yahweh , the God of the Jews, with the Egyptian god Seth . Diverging from previous zoologically multiplicitous depictions , Seth's appearance during the Hellenistic period onwards was depicted as resembling

3960-519: The Flood upon the human race, from which a feminine power such as Sophia or Pronoia (Providence) rescued Noah . Yaldabaoth made a covenant with Abraham , in which he was obligated to serve him along with his descendants. The Biblical prophets were to proclaim Yaldabaoth's glory, but at the same time, through Sophia's influence, they reminded people of their higher origin and prepared for the coming of Christ . At Sophia's instigation, Yaldabaoth arranged for

4050-672: The Hebrew God of the Old Testament as the evil, false god and creator of the material universe, and the Unknown God of the Gospel , the father of Jesus Christ and creator of the spiritual world, as the true, good God. In the Archontic , Sethian , and Ophite systems, Yaldabaoth is regarded as the malevolent Demiurge and false god of the Old Testament who generated the material universe and keeps

4140-476: The Jews and exalt Egypt and its gods. In this context some Egyptians discerned similarities between Yahweh's in-narrative actions and attributes and those of Seth (such as being associated with foreigners, deserts, and storms), in addition to a phonetic resemblance between Koinē Greek : Ἰαω , romanized:  Iaō , Yahweh's name as used by hellenised Jews , and Coptic : ⲓⲱ , romanized:  Iō , lit.   'donkey', then considered as

4230-641: The Jews as a nation betrayed and subjugated by the Pharaoh , for whom Yahweh subjects Egyptians to ten plagues — destroying their country, defiling the Nile , and killing all their first-born sons. Jewish migration within the Hellenised Ptolemaic Kingdom to Greek-speaking Egyptian cities such as Alexandria led to the creation of the Septuagint , a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek . Furthermore,

4320-407: The angels in subjection, Yaldabaoth generated the material universe. In the act of creation, however, Yaldabaoth emptied himself of his supreme power. When Yaldabaoth breathed the soul into the first man, Adam , Sophia instilled in him the divine spark of the spirit. After matter, Yaldabaoth produced the serpent spirit (Ophiomorphos), which is the origin of all evil. The light being Sophia caused

4410-577: The animal of Seth. From this arose a popular response to the Jewish accusation that Egyptians were merely worshipping beasts, namely that, in truth, the Jews themselves worshipped a beast, a donkey or a donkey-headed man, ie Seth. Accusations of onolatry against the Jews, spread from the Egyptian milieu, with its understanding of the donkey's Seth-related importance, to the rest of the Graeco-Roman world, which

4500-482: The committee in charge of the third Parnasse contemporain compilation. As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote many articles and notices. He became known with the novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the Académie Française. In La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893) France ridiculed belief in

4590-484: The course of the 19th century, other variants of the already established adjective 'intellectual' as a noun appeared in English and in French, where in the 1890s the noun ( intellectuels ) formed from the adjective intellectuel appeared with higher frequency in the literature. Collini writes about this time that "[a]mong this cluster of linguistic experiments there occurred ... the occasional usage of 'intellectuals' as

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4680-582: The depths of Chaos, together with 49 demons, tortures sacrilegious souls in a scorching hot torrent of pitch. Here he is a lion-faced archon, half flame, half darkness. Yaldabaoth appears as a rebellious angel both in the apocryphal Gospel of Judas and the Gnostic work Hypostasis of the Archons . In some of these Gnostic texts, Yaldabaoth is further identified with the Ancient Roman god Saturnus . Yaldabaoth

4770-502: The earliest textual data, which termed Yaldabaoth "the King of Chaos", he was the progenitor of chaos, not its progeny. Scholem's own theory rendered the name as Yald' Abaoth. Yald' being Aramaic : ילדא, romanized : yaldā but translated as 'begetter', not 'child' and Abaoth being a term attested in magic texts, descending from Hebrew : צבאות , romanized :  Tzevaot , lit.   ' Sabaoth , armies', one of

4860-465: The errors of logical fallacy , ideological stupidity, and poor planning hampered by ideology. In her memoirs, the Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher wrote that the anti-monarchical French Revolution (1789–1799) was "a utopian attempt to overthrow a traditional order [...] in the name of abstract ideas , formulated by vain intellectuals". The American academic Peter H. Smith describes

4950-760: The general public". This expresses a dichotomy, derived from Plato, between public knowledge and private knowledge, "civic culture" and "professional culture", the intellectual sphere of life and the life of ordinary people in society. In the United States, members of the intellectual status class have been demographically characterized as people who hold liberal -to- leftist political perspectives about guns-or-butter fiscal policy . In "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1949), Friedrich Hayek wrote that "journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists, radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists" form an intellectual social class whose function

5040-712: The generation of Jesus through the Virgin Mary . For his proclamation, he used John the Baptist . At the moment of the baptism organized by Yaldabaoth, Sophia took on the body of Jesus and through it taught people that their destiny was the Kingdom of Light (the spiritual world), not the Kingdom of Darkness (the material universe). Only after his baptism did Jesus receive divine power and could perform miracles. But since Jesus destroyed his kingdom instead of promoting it, Yaldabaoth had him crucified . Before his martyrdom, Christ escaped from

5130-494: The intellectual". Moreover, some intellectuals were anti-academic, despite universities (the academy) being synonymous with intellectualism . In France, the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), an identity crisis of antisemitic nationalism for the French Third Republic (1870–1940), marked the full emergence of the "intellectual in public life", especially Émile Zola , Octave Mirbeau and Anatole France directly addressing

5220-530: The intellectuals of Latin America as people from an identifiable social class, who have been conditioned by that common experience and thus are inclined to share a set of common assumptions (values and ethics); that ninety-four per cent of intellectuals come either from the middle class or from the upper class and that only six per cent come from the working class . Philosopher Steven Fuller said that because cultural capital confers power and social status as

5310-435: The intellectuals" to change and improve their societies. According to Hayek, intellectuals disproportionately support socialism for idealistic and utopian reasons that cannot be realized in practice. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted that "the Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern them" ( L'intellectuel est quelqu'un qui se mêle de ce qui ne le regarde pas ). Noam Chomsky expressed

5400-461: The jobs they do, but [by] the manner in which they act, the way they see themselves, and the [social and political] values that they uphold. According to Thomas Sowell , as a descriptive term of person, personality, and profession, the word intellectual identifies three traits: In Latin language , at least starting from the Carolingian Empire , intellectuals could be called litterati ,

5490-399: The late 1st century CE in non-rabbinical Jewish and early Christian sects. In the formation of Christianity , various sectarian groups, labeled "gnostics" by their opponents, emphasised spiritual knowledge ( gnosis ) of the divine spark within, over faith ( pistis ) in the teachings and traditions of the various communities of Christians. Gnosticism presents a distinction between

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5580-418: The majority opinion until a 1974 analysis by Scholem explained its origin. Consequently most scholars retracted their endorsement (for example Gilles Quispel did so by lamenting humorously that due its literary merits he believes the originator of the name Yaldabaoth had made the same erroneous association between baoth and tohuwabohu as the former majority opinion). Additionally, Scholem argued that based on

5670-462: The margins of society". Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a society, although the North American usage of the term intellectual includes the university academics. The difference between intellectual and academic is participation in the realm of public affairs. Jürgen Habermas ' Structural Transformation of Public Sphere (1963) made significant contribution to

5760-508: The matter of French antisemitism to the public; thenceforward, "intellectual" became common, yet initially derogatory, usage; its French noun usage is attributed to Georges Clemenceau in 1898. Nevertheless, by 1930 the term "intellectual" passed from its earlier pejorative associations and restricted usages to a widely accepted term and it was because of the Dreyfus Affair that the term also acquired generally accepted use in English. In

5850-414: The matters of public policy , the public intellectual connects scholarly research to the practical matters of solving societal problems. The British sociologist Michael Burawoy , an exponent of public sociology , said that professional sociology has failed by giving insufficient attention to resolving social problems, and that a dialogue between the academic and the layman would bridge the gap. An example

5940-418: The name Ba'al in the Hebrew Bible . Thus Blacks' proposal renders Aramaic : ילדא בהתייה, romanized : yaldā behūṯā , lit . 'son of shame/ Ba'al '. In his proposed 1967 etymology Alfred Adam already diverged from the then majority opinion and translated Aramaic : ילדא, romanized : yaldā similarly to Scholem, as German : Erzeugung , lit.   'bringing forth'. He believed

6030-470: The name Yaldabaoth has been subject to many speculative theories. Until 1974, etymologies deriving from the unattested Aramaic : בהותא, romanized: bāhūṯā , supposedly meaning " chaos ", represented the majority opinion. After an analysis by the Jewish historian of religion Gershom Scholem published in 1974, this etymology no longer enjoyed any notable endorsement. His analysis showed the unattested Aramaic term to have been fabulated and attested only in

6120-455: The name's second part to derive from Syriac : ܐܒܗܘܬܗ‏ , romanized :  ˀabbāhūṯā , lit.   'fatherhood'. This he interpreted however to describe more broadly 'the power of generation'; thus suggesting the name to mean 'the bringing forth of the power of generation'. After the Assyrian conquest of Egypt during the 7th century BCE, Seth was considered an evil deity by

6210-410: The notion of public intellectual by historically and conceptually delineating the idea of private and public. Controversial, in the same year, was Ralf Dahrendorf 's definition: "As the court- jesters of modern society, all intellectuals have the duty to doubt everything that is obvious, to make relative all authority, to ask all those questions that no one else dares to ask". An intellectual usually

6300-570: The participation of academic public intellectuals in the public life of society is characterized by logically untidy and politically biased statements of the kind that would be unacceptable to academia. He concluded that there are few ideologically and politically independent public intellectuals, and disapproved public intellectuals who limit themselves to practical matters of public policy, and not with values or public philosophy , or public ethics , or public theology , nor with matters of moral and spiritual outrage. Socially, intellectuals constitute

6390-659: The public affairs of society. Consequently, being designated as a public intellectual is determined by the degree of influence of the designator's motivations , opinions, and options of action (social, political, ideological), and by affinity with the given thinker. After the failure of the large-scale May 68 movement in France, intellectuals within the country were often maligned for having specific areas of expertise while discussing general subjects like democracy. Intellectuals increasingly claimed to be within marginalized groups rather than their spokespeople, and centered their activism on

6480-482: The second time, to Emma Laprévotte. France had socialist sympathies and was an outspoken supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution . However, he also vocally defended the institution of monarchy as more inclined to peace than bourgeois democracy, saying in relation to efforts to end the First World War that "a king of France, yes a king, would have had pity on our poor, exhausted, bloodied nation. However, democracy

6570-413: The social and cultural ties created with their words, insights and ideas; and should be heard as social critics of politics and power . The determining factor for a "thinker" (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist) to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which the individual is implicated and engaged with the vital reality of the contemporary world, i.e. participation in

6660-577: The social problems relevant to their areas of expertise (such as gender relations in the case of psychologists). A similar shift occurred in China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre from the "universal intellectual" (who plans better futures from within academia) to minjian ("grassroots") intellectuals, the latter group represented by such figures as Wang Xiaobo , social scientist Yu Jianrong , and Yanhuang Chunqiu editor Ding Dong ( 丁東 ). In

6750-463: The souls trapped in physical bodies, imprisoned in the world full of pain and suffering that he created . However, not all Gnostics regarded the creator of the material universe as inherently evil or malevolent. For instance, Valentinians believed that the Demiurge is merely an ignorant and incompetent creator, trying to fashion the world as well as he can, but lacking the proper power to maintain its goodness. They were regarded as heretics by

6840-574: The story of the Exodus was adapted by Ezekiel the Tragedian into the Ancient Greek : ἐξαγωγή , romanized :  Exagōgḗ , a Greek play performed in Alexandria and seen by Egyptians and Jews. Egyptian receptions of the Exodus story were widely negative, because it insulted their gods and praised their suffering. Thus it inspired Egyptian works retelling the story, but changing its details to mock

6930-550: The transformation of penguins into humans – after the birds have been baptized by mistake by the almost-blind Abbot Mael. It is a satirical history of France , starting in Medieval times, going on to the author's own time with special attention to the Dreyfus affair and concluding with a dystopian future. The Gods Are Athirst ( Les dieux ont soif , 1912) is a novel, set in Paris during

7020-399: The transformation of society: providing advice and counsel to the political leaders, interpreting the country's politics to the mass of the population (urban workers and peasants). In the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said that vanguard-party revolution required the participation of the intellectuals to explain the complexities of socialist ideology to

7110-461: The uneducated proletariat and the urban industrial workers in order to integrate them to the revolution because "the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness" and will settle for the limited, socio-economic gains so achieved. In Russia as in Continental Europe , socialist theory was the product of

7200-488: The universities of the U.S. are bureaucratic, private businesses, they "do not teach critical reasoning to the student", who then does not know "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society". Likewise, Richard Rorty criticized the quality of participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of intellect , especially academic intellect". The American legal scholar Richard Posner said that

7290-434: The view that "intellectuals are specialists in defamation , they are basically political commissars , they are the ideological administrators, the most threatened by dissidence ." In his 1967 article " The Responsibility of Intellectuals ", Chomsky analyzes the intellectual culture in the U.S., and argues that it is largely subservient to power . He is particularly critical of social scientists and technocrats, who provide

7380-476: The wealthy in common cause appear to betray one's class origins. The 19th-century U.S. Congregational theologian Edwards Amasa Park said: "We do wrong to our own minds, when we carry out scientific difficulties down to the arena of popular dissension". In his view, it was necessary for the sake of social, economic and political stability "to separate the serious, technical role of professionals from their responsibility [for] supplying usable philosophies for

7470-488: Was born in 1881 (and died in 1918). France's relations with women were always turbulent, and in 1888 he began a relationship with Madame Arman de Caillavet , who conducted a celebrated literary salon of the Third Republic . The affair lasted until shortly before her death in 1910. After his divorce, in 1893, France had many liaisons, notably with a Madame Gagey, who committed suicide in 1911. In 1920, France married for

7560-421: Was contingent upon political pragmatism , abandoning the political neutrality of the academic intellectual. In The Sociological Imagination (1959), C. Wright Mills said that academics had become ill-equipped for participating in public discourse, and that journalists usually are "more politically alert and knowledgeable than sociologists, economists, and especially ... political scientists". That, because

7650-548: Was endorsed by Schenke , Böhlig , and Labib . The latter two also cited a supposed attestation for Aramaic : בהותא, romanized: bāhūthā , lit . 'chaos'. This supposed attestation stemmed from a Targum and was merely a corrupted reading of Aramaic : כהותא, romanized: kāhūthā , lit . 'strife' published in a 1859 Bible. This pseudo-variant was translated in Jastrow 's popular Aramaic dictionary as 'confusion'. Helped by these events, Hilgenfeld's etymology remained

7740-635: Was frequented by many writers and scholars. France studied at the Collège Stanislas , a private Catholic school, and after graduation he helped his father by working in his bookstore. After several years, he secured the position of cataloguer at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre. In 1876, he was appointed librarian for the French Senate . France began his literary career as a poet and a journalist. In 1869, Le Parnasse contemporain published one of his poems, " La Part de Madeleine ". In 1875, he sat on

7830-502: Was gradually superseded by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused, replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual person. The archaic term is the basis of the names of several academic institutions which call themselves Colleges of Letters and Science . The earliest record of the English noun "intellectual" is found in the 19th century, where in 1813, Byron reports that 'I wish I may be well enough to listen to these intellectuals'. Over

7920-460: Was largely ignorant of this context. In the most famous variations of narratives alleging Jewish onolatry Antiochus IV Epiphanes , a Seleucid king famous for raiding the Jerusalem Temple , supposedly discovered that its Holiest of Holies was not empty, but instead contained a donkey idol, and Tacitus (early second century CE) claimed that the Jews dedicated in their holiest shrine a statue of

8010-441: Was popular due to its perceived literary merits. It inspired Adolf Hilgenfeld to keep Matter's proposed 'chaos' translation, while fabulating a more plausible sounding, but unattested second noun: Aramaic : בהותא, romanized: bāhūthā , deriving the name from Aramaic : ילדא בהותא, romanized: yaldā bāhūthā supposedly meaning ' child of chaos' in 1884. This became the late 19th, early 20th-century majority opinion, which

8100-513: Was relatively common in European countries such as the United Kingdom , the "Man of Letters" ( littérateur ) denotation broadened to mean "specialized", a man who earned his living writing intellectually (not creatively) about literature: the essayist , the journalist , the critic , et al. Examples include Samuel Johnson , Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle . In the 20th century, such an approach

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