The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

technology has become increasingly available, and the numbers of intellectuals
have increased enormously from on the order of hundreds in Confucius’ China,
to the million scientists and scholars publishing today.
Intellectual life hinges on face-to-face situations because interaction rituals
can take place only on this level. Intellectual sacred objects can be created and
sustained only if there are ceremonial gatherings to worship them. This is what
lectures, conferences, discussions, and debates do: they gather the intellectual
community, focus members’ attention on a common object uniquely their own,
and build up distinctive emotions around those objects. But what is it that
distinguishes such gatherings of intellectuals from any other kind of IR? One
difference is in the structure of attention. The key intellectual event is a lecture
or a formal debate, a period of time when one individual holds the floor to
deliver a sustained argument on a particular topic. This is different from the
give-and-take of sociable conversations, which typically cannot reach any
complex or abstract level because the focus shifts too often. Intellectuals giving
their attention for half an hour or more to one viewpoint, developed as a
unified stream of discourse, are thereby elevating the topic into a larger, more
encompassing sacred object than the little fragmentary tokens of ordinary
sociable ties.
This gives us part of the answer. It is not enough, since there are other lay
occasions on which one individual monopolizes the discourse. Controlling who
gets to speak is the principal mode of enacting authority on the micro-level;
any boss, chief, high-ranking officer, or authoritarian parent also can control
such a one-way structure of discourse. Other IRs are closer to intellectual
lectures: political speeches, sermons, entertainments, and commemorative ad-
dresses. A speaker holds the floor for fairly long periods—and, he or she hopes,
the rapt attention of a large audience. These occasions have the ritual structure
of public events or festive breaks in community routine, and thus are some
way along the continuum toward the “transcendental” qualities that intellec-
tual rituals have. Despite these similarities, intellectual IRs differ in the nature
of their focus and in the relationship between speaker and audience. The
intellectual IR consists not in giving orders or practical information but in
expounding a worldview, a claim for understanding taken as an end in itself.
The audience is in the stance of pure listeners, not subordinates nor participants
in the moral community of faith which is invoked by religious ritual. Intellec-
tual discourse focuses implicitly on its autonomy from external concerns and
its reflexive awareness of itself.
What makes it possible for intellectuals to take this distinctive stance? Is it
because intellectuals are especially immersed in reading and writing? The key
intellectual ritual, the lecture, is one that has been prepared for by reading a
relevant background of texts; and its contents are typically on the way to


26 • (^) The Skeleton of Theory

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