What Is the Intelligentsia?

Abstract

mental faculty to designate a specific group of people ob viously implies a very exalted notion of that group's importance, and its members?intelligenty, intelligent or intellectual ones? are clearly more than intellectuals in the ordinary sense. Whether merely critically thinking or actively oppositional, their name in dicates that they thought of themselves as the embodied intelli gence, understanding, or consciousness of the nation. In other words, they clearly felt an exceptional sense of apartness from the society in which they lived. To use an old qualificative of German idealism which the intelhgentsia in its more lucid moments under stood only too well, and which in a diluted sociological meaning now enjoys a great vogue in America, they were clearly alienated in tellectuals of some sort. * See Note, p. 458, supplementing the Glossary, pp. 667-668.

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