Summary
This essay tries to explain, from texts coming from the existentialism school, what is the role of intellectuals at present and how they play a very important role in the construction of the perception of social reality.
Development of the topic
When Sartré says that he speaks from his existentialist position, he does so from the trench provided by atheism. He structures his argument in the following way: firstly, he directs it towards an audience of the 1940s that is going through a critical period of war and world political, industrial and ideological transformation; Basically Sartré responds in this way to the criticisms that are launched from humanism. In favor of existentialism, he maintains that it is only a doctrine that makes human life possible and that recognizes in itself that to carry out any action, means are required that imply intersubjectivity. Three principles explain why:
- Man is not definable because he begins by being nothing. Which means that human nature does not exist since, man is made. Man begins by being nothing and in his subjectivity, once he exists, he is a project, that is, what he supposes or projects to be. So, "existence precedes essence" and in the act itself it acquires a burden of responsibility for what it is or plans to be. It is in the choice of X or Y the path where it is reaffirmed and, it is implicit that every choice it contains in itself a value even when one chooses not to choose. At the same time one includes others in his choice, that is, we cannot make a decision without taking into account the others around us. Thus every choice implies a responsibility of being, we are responsible to all of what we choose.Inevitably this leads man to a state of constant anguish.
Now when Sartré speaks of an atheistic existentialism, he does not mean that he denies the existence of a God, since he realizes that his existence allows values to exist in the world and life is governed in a more straight and tangible way Furthermore, he maintains that since man is born free of essence, he needs something to which he can cling and justify his actions, with which the existence of God is essential: "There is no world without God."
For existentialists, man is always responsible for his passion and is condemned at every moment to invent and reinvent himself with the help of the signs that surround him and his very particular way of interpreting and making sense of them. With it it is clear that it is one who chooses his own being.
Sartré mentions that there is a certain helplessness accompanied by anguish when one perceives himself responsible and real awareness that his actions are at the same time actions that affect others. But what happens when, even knowing this, someone comes to feel responsible for what others do and tries to control his actions. It exemplifies it best: "From the moment when the possibilities that I consider are not rigorously compromised by my action, I must be disinterested, because no God, no design can adapt the world and its possibilities to my will."
In Sartré's dialectic, what follows is that man should not abandon himself to quietism, that is, existentialism does not promote it but quite the contrary, he maintains that it is in action that a reality is constructed. So, everything that happens to him is almost in his hands and not a few things remain to be done and, every action invariably carries a responsibility that commits him to himself and to everyone.
With all these arguments he defends his position as an existentialist intellectual and questions putting on the table the characteristics of what anybody should be from any political and ideological position.
Along the same lines, Gramsci has categorized intellectuals into two: the "organic" and the "traditional" or inorganic. For him the most important question that defines one and the other is the accumulation of relationships in which his activities are carried out, that is, for whom he writes, what he means, how he says it, where he speaks from and what are the conditions in which he performs his work.
Thus, the one and the other can be circumscribed in different levels of the social structure, for example, when he uses the concept of hegemony, Gramsci refers to that group located at the top of the social because they have in their power and domain political assets, cultural and therefore intellectual. That group produces its own organic intellectuals according to an internal consensus in which rules and ends are designated according to the ideas they share.
However, the groups that do not have this access to these places in the social structure have been called “subordinates”, however, their role is also fundamental in rural and traditionalist societies. Commonly they are the ones who manage to get out of their communities and have contact with that other reality that they face in the cities through study and professional training.
It is then that they return to their society with a broader and more critical view of their condition of exclusion and can serve as intermediaries between their social group and the ruling class. We see, therefore, that this figure of intellectual does not precisely serve the State or the political apparatus, rather his interests are related to the social plane and his aims are directed more towards the development of their communities. Thus the subordinates also manage to have a voice.
Now, of any of them: what is their role in society, according to Gramsci an intellectual is "he is a" philosopher ", an artist, a man of good taste, participates in a world conception, has a conscious line of conduct moral, and that is why it contributes to sustaining or modifying a conception of the world, that is, to creating new ways of thinking. ”
In other words, for him an intellectual must, from a critical perspective, constantly renew the physical and social world, pour into public opinion something that generates precisely that, public opinion; in this way the intellectual participates actively in his society.
Pierre Bourdieu also agrees with the idea of hegemony to say that hegemony manifests itself in the construction of the fields to which each intellectual belongs. A field has specific and particular properties, that is, each one has its own rules, language, forms of expression and codes.
In this part Bourdieu introduces the concept of "habitus" to justify that a certain type of behavior corresponds to such a field: "habitus is the system of unconscious dispositions produced by the internalization of objective structures" inclusive, a field can end up consecrating a certain type acts once it has been consolidated. For example, the field of religion it contains is reaffirmed with the rituals of baptism, marriage, confirmation, etc.
A field is always defined in function or relation to another, thus a certain socio-cultural capital and specific interests are put into play. But their characteristics are not limited to that, they are even more complex since they develop their own symbolic assets, which makes it occupy a position in the superstructure, giving it, of course, a certain type of economic and symbolic gratification.
Thus, each field may or may not belong to the dominant or dominated class, this being the equivalent of the capital that its symbolic goods and the level of its economic gratification give it a position in the market of cultural goods or of the political and ideological forces that in that historical moment they are in dispute.
The intellectual field, for example, will always be subordinate to the political field and sometimes obeys it, as is the case with organic intellectuals, thus, the creation of intellectuals are always within an ideological field that in turn occupies a certain place in certain field of power.
Conclusion:
That is why intellectual production is perhaps too important at all historical moments, since they are opinion formers, transmitters of ideas that society recognizes even as ambassadors of their own culture. However, I consider that the aforementioned authors always invite us to question from where do they produce their knowledge and what are the intentions of the intellectual task. We cannot consume all kinds of ideas without reflecting on the ends.
Electronics references:
- Sartré, Jean Paul. (1945), “Existentialism is a humanism”, https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_existencialismo_es_un_humanismo Gramsci, Antonio. For a formation of the intellectuals. The training of intellectuals at: https://sociologia1unpsjb.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/gramsci-formacion-intelectuales.pdfBourdieu, Pierre "Field of power, intellectual field and class habitus", in Campo de Poder, intellectual field, Tucuman, Montessor.
Sartré, Jean Paul. (1945), "Existentialism is a humanism".
Ditto, pp. 4.
Gramsci, Antonio. For a formation of the intellectuals. The formation of intellectuals.
Bourdieu, Pierre "Field of power, intellectual field and class habitus", in: Field of power, intellectual field, Tucuman, Montessor.
