Guest editors: Tomasz Rawski and Krzysztof Świrek
The figure of the total intellectual who transcends the narrow frames of specialised knowledge and autonomously develops his own field of activity is the reverse of Max Weber’s “specialist without spirit”: someone who has mastered a narrow, technically defined area of expertise to perfection. Total intellectuals escape the logic of bureaucracy which came to occupy a crucial position in twentieth-century science. They go beyond the research standards cultivated in their respective environments and break the common career patterns of their times. Their thought cannot be contained within the narrow frames of specialised disciplines.
The authors of the articles collected in this issue of State of Affairs analyse total intellectuals both in the general, terminological perspective, and in the context of specific strategies and biographies. They reflect upon the merit of the total intellectual’s scientific outlook – where does its value lie, if not in providing expert knowledge and suggesting practical solutions? The authors present the specificity of the total intellectual’s functioning in Eastern European countries and expose the differences between East and West. The crisis of the figure of the intellectual is also tackled in the issue, and questions are raised about the different senses and methods of the intellectual’s social engagement. Finally, the authors draw on the history of social thought to problematise the total intellectuals of the turn of the nineteenth century as architects of courageous, far-reaching, and complex solutions to concrete crises embedded in the idea of modernity.
The last section of the issue is composed of discussions about books: reviews as well as reports from meetings organised by the journal editors, and devoted to the work of Polish humanities scholars and researchers.