Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline

Rating:
Summary: A decent book. Not Posner's best.
Review: In Public Intellectuals, Judge Richard Posner sets out to understand why academics, philosophers, and commentators in the American media have so little influence over public opinion. Posner finds that most debate is very good at mobilizing those who already agree with you, but has little impact on others. No public intellectual every really changes anyone's mind.

Posner gives several reasons for this decline. 1) Public intellectuals are now more than ever college academics. Their professional jargon and personal lives keep them out of touch with day to day affairs in America. 2) Public intellectuals make bold predictions that are almost always wrong. We were supposed to be poor and starving by 1975, according to some environmentalist intellectuals. We are still here, rich and full, but they won't admit they were wrong. 3) Public intellectuals usually get that title by publishing outside their sphere of expertise. Noam Chomsky, for example, is a linguist, but the media seek out his opinion in the area of foreign policy. Intellectuals are out of their league, and often don't understand even the most basic facts. 4) Intellectuals seek moral status, with very clear lines between right and wrong. Real life is not so clear, so the intellectual is not very helpful for the average person, or the average politician. Posner went to great lengths in another of his books, The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory, to address this last point in depth.

Overall, historians and sociologists interested in studying academics and commentators will find this book useful and enlightening. Average folk will find it long winded and rather boring. After all, we already know that commentators and media personalities are clueless windbags, right?

I think this is the biggest weakness of the book. Posner looks at the marketplace for ideas from the perspective of the producer: the media and the intellectuals. If he were serious about trying to understand the decline of intellectuals, he would have spent as much time looking at consumers of ideas. Mostly, he looks only at other intellectuals as consumers, perhaps because they're the only ones buying. As a major figure in economic analysis, I thought it appalling that Posner did not spend more time on day to day consumption of these ideas.

As mentioned briefly above, Posner takes a lot of time in this book rehashing themes from his other books. He looks at morality and public policy, the Clinton impeachment, and many other subjects on which he has written quite extensively. It is nice that his ideas all fit into a unified framework such as this, but that doesn't mean I wanted to hear about these other subjects at length.

What does it mean that a public intellectual like Posner would write a book criticizing public intellectuals? Could it be that his ideas are not getting the acclaim that he thinks they deserve?

Rating:
Summary: Maverick or Monarch?
Review: Many years ago, Voltaire said something to the effect that we should cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it. I was reminded of that caveat as I worked my way through this book. Posner defines a public intellectual as one of those "who opine to an educated public on questions of or inflected by a political or ideological concern" and asserts that many (most?) contemporary thinkers thus defined become academics and then, over time, specialists in their respective fields. As a result, public issues of various kinds are denied the circumspection they require from those once capable of providing it. In Part Two, Posner claims to substantiate claims made in Part One "and goes beyond definition to an explanation of the varied genres of public-intellectual expression, and deals in depth with some of the most interesting and ambitious, and not merely the typical, public intellectuals active in the United States today." He identifies the usual suspects: Robert Bork, Noam Chomsky, Paul Ehrlich, Stanley Fish, Milton Friedman, Stephen Jay Gould, Lani Guinier, Gertrude Himmlefaub, Christopher Lasch, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, and Michael Warner. He evaluates each, damning with faint praise, praising with faint damnation, or simply dismissing entirely as unworthy of serious consideration. In many instances, Posner suggests, these and other "public intellectual" wannabes embraced what Posner calls "false beliefs" (e.g. "collectivist public policies") and thereby rejected or simply ignored the practical implications and consequences of such convictions. (It is important to keep in mind that Posner sees himself as a "pragmatist.") Other reviewers have taken issue with Posner's evaluations of various individuals. Some suggest that he invalidates candidates for a position he himself wishes to occupy: in Gary Rosen's words, "king of the public intellectuals." Be that as it may, I found this book to be extraordinarily thought-provoking. It achieves what seems to be one of Posner's primary objectives, expressed in the final chapter: "...my hopes for this book will be amply fulfilled if it merely stimulates a wider recognition of the problematic state of the public intellectual in the United States today and encourages further study of an odd and interesting market."

Rating:
Summary: like public intellectuals, my attention span also declined
Review: The prolific and erudite Judge Posner turns out books at such an astoundingly rapid rate that you'd swear the man has two brains. He is, without a doubt, one of the most notable scholarly writers of our time. It is too bad, then, that this initially appealing book, "Public Intellectuals," falls short of what I expected.

I first learned of this book during an interview with the author on C-SPAN's "Booknotes" with Brian Lamb. As the dust jacket correctly boasts, this volume "is the first systematic analysis of the contemporary American public intellectual." In Part One of the book, Posner's critical chronicle of how today's public intellectual is most often out of his/her league is right on the money. Modern public intellectuals are almost exclusively academics, members of an ever more specialized university culture. Because of this solid trend, the typical public intellectual has very little "expert" knowledge outside of his/her esoteric area of study, lending him/her little if any credentials to comment on the general subject(s) he/she so "authoritatively" tackles in the public media. Posner's arsenal of examples, evidence, names, citations, and footnotes (he is a legal writer, of course) makes his case clear and well-defended.

However agreeable his basic thesis is, though, it is his market approach to characterizing the problem that seems rather incongruent and almost far-fetched. In his effort to quantify the problem of the worsening American public intellectual, Posner draws heavily on economic principles to explain why public intellectuals today are no good--in terms of "market failure." He demonstrates this model in Chapter Five with a veritable data section, full of charts and graphs. Though there is no better way to fortify one's thesis than with scientific evidence, the model Posner chooses just doesn't seem convincing. Public intellectuals do not really participate in a consumer culture, if you think about it. So long as there is (and always has been) public media outlets, intellectuals (genuine and self-proclaimed) will write, comment, prognosticate, and critique.

Part Two of the book consists of five "genre studies" of areas where modern public intellectuals most often tread. Here, Posner takes a detailed look at key intellectual players and painstakingly criticizes and discredits each of them with what can only be described as an off-putting and perfectionist air--except for MIT's Noam Chomsky, who deserves it. From George Orwell to Chicago's Martha Nussbaum, Allan Bloom (whom he "outs") to NYU's Ronald Dworkin (his personal sparring partner), Richard Rorty to Gertrude Himmelfarb, Posner deals each writer a summary list of their shortcomings--and then thanks many of them in the Acknowledgments! Within these 150 pages, the reader is left with little to suggest that any of the prominent public intellectuals of our time retain even one shred of competence.

The Conclusion, the most potentially redemptive (but shortest) section of the book, mollifies some of the blows inflicted by Posner in Part Two. However, the remedies suggested by Posner on how to improve today's public intellectual "market" are so soft, implausible, and ineffective even if implemented, that he might as well just say that restoring integrity to the public intellectual is a hopeless endeavor. The reader can only conclude that Posner's book, enlightening though it is in recognizing and attempting to explain the problem of the declining quality of public intellectuals, falls short of fulfilling its promises in the end.