WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS FOR? (Inaugural Lecture by Dennis Smith delivered at Loughborough 2001 (original) (raw)

Intellectuals are not satisfied with conventional wisdom and may in some cases try to reduce its influence or change its character. This is a dangerous and tricky business. If they go into the business of persuasion they are competing with others, such as advertisers and politicians, who are experts at, so to speak ‘farming’ or cultivating common sense to get people to behave the way they want to. By intellectuals I mean people who use their minds - their power of reason and their power of imagination -as a way of getting knowledge about and insight into the ways things are: the way we are, the way the world is. So, intellectuals are people who ask - and sometimes answer - awkward and fundamental questions in an interesting way.