Intellectuals who remain detached from popular passions become a caste, not leaders
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. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1497
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the organic intellectual’s necessary emotional link to the people-nation versus the pedant’s sterile separation.
- XREF: Connects forward to Gramsci’s whole theory of organic vs. traditional intellectuals that the Islamophobia tradition (Said’s Orientalism) builds on. — connects to: Intellectuals who detach from popular feeling become a bureaucratic caste, not true intellectuals — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1497