Last intellectual

Author: (USA) Russell Jacoby
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: Intellectuals Series, Selected as "Top 20 Books Influencing China's Business World"
Author Russell Jacoby is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jacoby is known for his sharp writing and bold views. His other works include Social Anemia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology (1975), The Repression of Psychoanalysis (1983), and The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in the Age of Apathy (1999).
Intellectuals and Professionals
The title of Jacoby's book The Last Intellectuals may sound alarmist, but the questions he raises are not groundless. In the preface, Jacoby writes, "Where are the young intellectuals? This is the starting point of all my questions. The 'last' generation of intellectuals in America, those born in the early decades of the 20th century, their existence and unique voices are unmatched by those younger than them."
Jacoby argues that in mid-20th-century America, many intellectuals lived by writing book reviews and essays, their space being the streets and cafes of cities, and their audience being the educated public. By the 1950s, the open cultural space had shrunk, and writing alone could no longer sustain a livelihood. With the rise of universities, the older generation of intellectuals was replaced by professors and high-tech experts. Today, young "intellectuals" are almost all products of the academic education model, surviving only within the campus and narrow academic discourse.
Jacoby suggests that the older intellectuals had sharp and perceptive writing, which cultivated sensibility and sharpened thinking. In contrast, academics today are burdened by the style of their doctoral dissertations. He writes in the book, "The academic system has tamed intellectuals, making them submit to money, status, and power, willingly abandoning the mastery of language and critical thinking of the older generation."
Jacoby concludes that specialization has not only failed to promote but has actually hindered the health of public culture. Today, American universities are well-funded, yet resources are wasted on unimportant writers and works. Jacoby criticizes this era, which emphasizes "academic standards" but lacks "critical standards," using Edmund Wilson, one of his "last intellectuals," as an example. Wilson, one of the most outstanding critics of the 20th century, despised so-called "academic standards." This writer, outside the university system, dared to go to extremes to maintain independence, openly declaring, "I will not attend any academic conferences."
Urban Influence on Cultural Life
Discussions about intellectuals and culture cannot overlook the quality of urban life. Cities, as manifestations of culture, are a topic dear to Western intellectuals, but in China, such concerns are less visible. In The Last Intellectuals, there is a chapter titled "The Road to the Suburbs," dedicated to cities. Jacoby quotes Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, saying that the vitality of cities lies in their historic communities. However, planners, officials, and developers, under the guise of development, have bought land and destroyed warm, old neighborhoods with high-rise buildings and highways, greatly weakening urban vitality.
Jacoby believes that to some extent, urban renewal in New York directly affected its cultural life. In the 1960s, Greenwich Village died, and young intellectuals could no longer afford its cheap rents and free-spirited life. They turned instead to academia, where university salaries were attractive. Jacoby writes in the book, "Urban researchers in the 1950s, when cities faced crises, stood up and represented the last generation of intellectuals responsible to the educated public."
Jacoby considers Lewis Mumford to be the "last intellectual" who made the greatest contribution to urban studies. Mumford once compared the 1950s in America to the "age of bulldozers" and predicted that future cities would be "mechanized uselessness," a chaotic landscape of highways, overpasses, and parking lots—scenery that residents of Chinese cities are now all too familiar with. Caring about cities, cherishing historical memory, and breaking the fallacy of "bigger is better" are urgent tasks for the Chinese people.
The New Left Abandoning Public Consciousness
Two chapters (out of a total of seven) in the book discuss the issue of "campus new leftists." Jacoby mentions another "last intellectual" he admires, sociologist C. Wright Mills of the United States, known for his research on the role of intellectuals in modern society. American intellectuals once harbored a kind of "self-hatred," condemning the vulgarity and materialism in American culture and being out of sync with mainstream politics. Because the older intellectuals were critical of capitalism and commercial society, they were generally considered left-wing. Mills, a typical left-wing figure, always believed that intellectuals represented social conscience and must participate in society while studying it, maintaining strong public and political awareness.
Today, however, "new leftists" in American universities are entirely different—they merely adopt radical postures within the ivory tower. The Last Intellectuals writes that since the 1960s and 1970s, new leftists have risen in academia, and while their achievements are undeniable, their writings are often filled with pretentious academic jargon, understandable only to fellow experts, with no social influence. But in return, the new leftists have no desire or inclination to write for the public. They are devoted to academia, immersed in academic jargon and concepts, their eyes fixed on professional journals, specialized books, and conferences.
Jacoby points out that today's universities are filled with an "entrepreneurial spirit," and once selfless scholars have become contractors and advertisers, with the "academic bourgeoisie" producing counterfeit and shoddy specialized works. The new leftists are particularly skilled at playing this game.
Exploring the Responsibility of Intellectuals
The Last Intellectuals was published in 1987 and reissued in 2000. Have intellectuals truly disappeared, and is social conscience on the brink of extinction? It seems not. Recently, the Global Times introduced two renowned contemporary American intellectuals, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, who, despite being in academia, remain outside the highly specialized academic system, speaking independently and powerfully on international affairs and social justice.
However, the flaws in the academic system that Jacoby points out are also worth attention for Chinese readers. The thickness or thinness, rightness or wrongness of customs concerns the rise or fall of society (or, in other words, "sustainable development"). Broadening the scope of discourse and further exploring the social responsibility of intellectuals is by no means an optional matter.