public intellectual

Public intellectual

The term public intellectual describes an 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 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 the margins of society". Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated elite 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.