Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Simone de Beauvoir, Emile Zola, Noam Chomsky, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Ayn Rand, Robert Oppenheimer, Frantz Fanon etc... Many critics, philosophers, authors, and scientists declared(are declaring) their opinions and took( are taking) actions for the public and against those who have power. They did and are doing so according to their ideas and faith in order to improve our society. But why are they, called the "intellectuals," doing their actions? What faith and ideas led their activities? Who are the intellectual? Edward Said explains of them,in particular 'the intellectual as outsider, "amateur," and disturber of the status quo(1)', in this book, which is printed of his declarations in a BBC radio program.
In the twenty century, new type of the intellectuals appeared, what is called the "professionals" such as business consultants, and journalists based on mass-high education. Their roles in our society are not only to maintain it but also to improve it. Said has an emphasis on the latter. And he explains of it through some discourses by many who sought for the ideal intellectual, such as Antonio Gramsci, Julien Benda, Jean-Paul Sartre...
In Japan, society wants of not only the anti-power intellectuals but also the well-balanced ones. Some think that the latter, those whom Said emphasized, changed our society, but it is false. Both kinds of intellectuals improve it altogether. Anti-power intellectuals have risk to break our society. And maintaining-status-quo intellectuals cannot change it; they can only to make minor change of it.
(1) Edwaed Said, Representations of The Intellectual (1994; first Vintage Books Edition, 1996), p. x.
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