Intellectuals who detach from popular feeling become a bureaucratic caste, not true intellectuals

Evidence

The popular element “feels” but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element “knows” but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel. The two extremes are therefore pedantry and philistinism on the one hand and blind passion and sectarianism on the other. Not that the pedant cannot be impassioned; far from it. Impassioned pedantry is every bit as ridiculous and dangerous as the wildest sectarianism and demagogy. The intellectual’s error consists in believing that one can know without understanding and even more without feeling and being impassioned (not only for knowledge in itself but also for the object of knowledge): in other words that the intellectual can be an intellectual (and not a pure pedant) if distinct and separate from the people-nation, that is, without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation and connecting them dialectically to the laws of history and to a superior conception of the world, scientifically and coherently elaborated—i.e. knowledge. One cannot make politics-history without this passion, without this sentimental connection between intellectuals and people-nation. In the absence of such a nexus the relations between the intellectual and the people-nation are, or are reduced to, relationships of a purely bureaucratic and formal order; the intellectuals become a caste, or a priesthood (so-called organic centralism). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1497

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what distinguishes genuine intellectuals from a pedantic caste: the feeling-passion nexus with the people-nation.
• ADDENDUM: The ‘intellectuals become a caste/priesthood’ mechanism parallels how the missionary/cleric class in French West Africa justified coercion while claiming civilizing fraternity — organic intellectuals gone bureaucratic.
• XREF: connects to: Intellectuals who remain detached from popular passions become a caste, not leaders — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1497; Intellectuals cut off from popular passion become a bureaucratic caste unable to make history

Broader Connections

• Intellectuals cut off from popular passion become a bureaucratic caste unable to make history #corroborates (0.97)
• Intellectuals who remain detached from popular passions become a caste, not leaders #corroborates (0.93) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1497