The Public Intellectual in American Life

America has sometimes been described as a pragmatic, anti-intellectual society. But in fact, from the Puritans to the Founders to the New York intellectuals and the Civil Rights movement, many major movements in American life have drawn language and inspiration from public intellectuals who delve deeply into the problems of their age, and talk about them in a broad-ranging, non-specialist register.

Today, alas, our mainstream public conversation seems to be dominated more by punditry, overconfident number-crunching and political spin than genuine, deep reflection. Some intellectual energy and creativity can be found in the precinct of anonymous online posters, many of whom traffic in big words and scintillating edginess, but scant wisdom or intellectual maturity. Is there a future for genuine public intellectuals in America? Where are the signs of hope? Is there anything worth retrieving from the past? For decades, George Scialabba has been one of America’s premier chroniclers of public intellectual life. His new book The Sealed Envelope: Toward an Intelligent Utopia reflects on the work and impact of thinkers like William F. Buckley, Barbara Ehrenreich, Allan Bloom, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Sandel and many others.

On February 25th, the Public Culture Project will host him for a conversation with Jesse McCarthy, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and of the Social Sciences, and Anastasia Berg, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UC Irvine. Both are editors at The Point, one of our moment’s premier public intellectual magazines.