There can't be all that many people who are willing, in the presence of others, to call themselves intellectuals. There may even be those for whom intellectuals are a fiction, like fairies. But most people would struggle to their feet to attest to their existence. 'Intellectual' is a word which is hard to use without irony or reproof; often, it is a slur, and it has often seemed to invite the qualification 'so-called' or 'supposed'. An intellectual need not be intelligent, and may be a fool. We think of him as someone who has no religion, as someone who is concerned with ideas but unable to commit himself to any, or to do anything with them. There are intellectuals who have wished to change the world, and a very few who have managed to do so: but some intellectuals have been thought to have difficulty in changing their socks. Bertrand Russell, Paul Johnson reports, was unable to make himself a cup of tea. The term came to currency with the classifications employed in the Marxist sysem, and has been used to deplore the scarcity in this country of a certain someone supposedly thick on the European ground.

LRB 17 August 1989 | PDF Download