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Bishara examines terms such as “the intellectual,” “the intelligentsia,” “the organic intellectual,” and “the public intellectual”. He distinguishes between intellectuals and those who are required to utilize their intellectual capacity; between academics immersed exclusively in their field of expertise and social actors who take an interest in various social affairs without specializing in a specific field. The author then moves on to mark the distinction between “an intellectual” and the rest of society. Through this process, and by critiquing alternative conceptualizations, the author elucidates what he considers the main attribute of an intellectual—the capacity to make decisions based on epistemological grounds that lead to value judgments. Two types of intellectuals, argues Bishara, are absent from the Arab revolutions. The first is the “revolutionary intellectual,” who is able to both maintain a critical distance from the regimes in place and the revolutions, and also critique them. “Conservative intellectuals,” on the other hand, are capable of explaining the necessity of keeping the old regime, promoting the inherent opportunities for change within it, as well as the wisdom enshrined within the state and its traditions. For Bishara, the role of the revolutionary intellectual does not end with the outbreak of a revolution, but in fact takes on greater complexity and significance once the need to propose post-revolutionary alternatives arises.
