Introduction

Although some men specialised in the production of ideas even in the most primitive of societies, it is only during the last three or four hundred years that intellectuals have become a large, well-defined and self-conscious group. Several circumstances combined to separate them from non-intellectuals. Foremost among these was the growing division of labour which accompanied the rise of capitalism and which occasioned a rapid increase in the absolute and proportional number of highly educated persons in society. Trained specialists of various sorts were necessary in an industrialising world; so was a literate population which served as a market for the intellectuals’ cultural products. Along with this growth in the number and importance of accredited specialists and purveyors of culture, a second process which stimulated the intellectuals’ self-awareness was their changed position in society. The expanding market for intellectual skills freed men of ideas from the shackles of ecclesiastical and courtly patronage. Whereas in mediaeval times their political allegiances had been more or less rigidly constrained by the interests of their patrons, an element of indeterminacy entered their lives as they began to sell their skills on the open market. Intellectuals in the modern world had to come to grips with such questions as to which class (if any) they belonged and to which political current they adhered. What was formerly a ‘given’ was now problematic. Answers to these questions were formulated and debated in a host of settings, among which political sects, parties and movements, schools and universities, newspapers, journals and reviews, salons and coffee houses, clubs, discussion circles and professional societies provided some of the most important. The evolution of these contexts for meeting and discussion represented a third social condition necessary for the crystallisation of an intellectual identity.