Nisbet, Robert A. "What is an Intellectual?" Commentary Magazine. 1965.

Abstract:

The question of who or what is an intellectual may not be one that would have rocked the Mermaid Tavern or rattled the tables of 18th-century coffee houses, but in our self-conscious age it plainly has commanding importance. Used as a noun, the word “intellectual” is a curious one. For all its current popularity it is notoriously imprecise and its use is attended by various ambiguities and tricky nuances. No one out of adolescence would dream of identifying himself publicly as “an intellectual” (as he would have no diffidence about doing as, say, a writer, artist, humanist, scholar, or scientist), and it is unlikely that he would so introduce a friend, save in good-natured irony. Yet it is clearly a prestige-word, and its spreading use as a noun is among the word-explosions of the last couple of decades. The history of language suggests that whenever a word passes suddenly from long-established adjectival status to noun-form, precision and clarity are early casualties. For centuries, “intellectual” was used as an adjective and everyone knew exactly what was meant—although admittedly clarity began to dim and meaning wander when, just before the noun was born, the adjective came to be used in certain circles to refer to the interests of haute culture and, as often as not, was accented by irony or mild derision.

When we come to the noun (I have no recollection of its serious use much before the late 1940’s; in the 30’s, “writer” was made to serve a legion of purposes), the range of accepted meaning is nearly limitless. So is the range of context in which the word is used. One finds oneself irresistibly sniffing for motive even today whenever the word is thrown at one. Scholars and scientists are likely to feel happy with the designation only when the company is proper. To be characterized “more an intellectual than a scholar” can be as devastating in one type of company as “more a scholar than an intellectual” in another type. Yet it would appear that the word, like the type, is here to stay. It may even attain the unchallenged eminence that the word “philosopher” once had. The great Faraday, we are told, preferred for himself the title of philosopher to that of scientist. There may well be scientists today who prefer the title intellectual, but I don’t know what a poll of the National Academy would reveal…

 

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