Is There the Need Today for the Intellectual?

Volume 4|Issue 13| Summer 2015 |Articles

Abstract

The central problematic addressed by this paper is the alleged end of an era for the intellectual and the rise of the age of the think tank. In an attempt to investigate the triggers behind this shift, the paper first considers the context for origination, and chooses the Cartesian moment to combine the structural elements of the intellectual by observing the tasks intellectuals appointed themselves to undertake. Second, it explores the claims of the end of an era for the intellectual, examines its assumptions and arguments, and discusses its conclusions – recommending this discourse in its essentially descriptive aspect and disagreeing in its formulation, judgement, and conclusions. Third, and in adherence to the principle of the inevitability of the movement of history, the paper sees that the end of the intellectual is in essence the end of the era in which intellectuals developed, and that it was on the ruins of the collapse of the traditional world that the think tank positioned itself in a pioneering position, just as intellectuals positioned themselves in their era.

Download Article Download Issue Cite this Article Subscribe for a year Cite this Article

Professor of Higher Education at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Sfax, Tunisia, he specializes in issues of modern and contemporary Arab thought. He has published several books in that field, most recently The Discourse of Arab Urbanism: A Study of Issues, Mechanisms, and Limits. He was awarded the Arab Prize for the Social Sciences and Humanities from the ACRPS in 2014-15.

× Citation/Reference
Arab Center
Harvard
APA
Chicago