ABSTRACT
In this fi rst chapter, we will look at the ideas of European unifi cation and integration as they have been developed through modern history. In this regard, intellectual elites have played the most important role. Intellectuals are persons who are concerned with social developments and problems from rational and moral points of view and who try to win recognition and infl uence among the public and in politics with their publications and writings (Shils 1982:179ff.). The notion of “intellectual” (intelligentsia) had been invented in countries like Russia, Poland, and France in the nineteenth century when they were fi ghting against totalitarian or foreign ruling classes or unscrupulous power elites; in these cases, they were also supporting revolutionary movements (Charle 2001; Winock 2003). In earlier times, intellectuals were often freelancing journalists or writers and living in precarious material and social circumstances; today, intellectuals are typically employed as public offi cials (such as university professors), commercially successful writers, and so forth. Intellectuals orient themselves (or claim to do so) toward universal human values, such as justice, rationality, and truth; because of this, they often tend to clash with the ruling elites. Intellectuals are chronically dissatisfi ed; they suffer from the state of society; and from this, utopian thinking emerges which designs a better world (Lepenies 1992). There are many different types of intellectuals, and their roles vary between epochs, societies, and cultures, depending on the character of the political regime (Münch 1986; Korom 2007). Intellectuals have not always been in opposition to the powerful; they can also serve as “ideologues,” that is, providers of ideas and arguments for the governing political elites. Not thoroughness but sensibility is the virtue of intellectuals; their theoretical constructs are often wrong, but they always “see something very well” (Mannheim 1970:457).
