Plus ça Change: Some Criticisms of Stefan Collini's Absent Minds

The question of how we identify intellectuals in twentieth-century Britain, and, more normatively, of how we should decide whether they have performed their role well, are ones that have remained largely uninvestigated by scholars until the very recent past. For, although undeniably important and intriguing, they have run into three sizeable obstacles that have prevented them assuming centre stage in historical debate, helping to cause the term to be used at best imprecisely, and at worst downright misleadingly. First, until relatively recently, the very idea of studying the role of intellectuals in British society – except in an exclusively external, social scientific sense – has tended to be frowned upon, since it has taken considerable time for the study of the history of ideas to escape its ghetto and to be regarded as a legitimate area of study. As such, focusing on exactly what intellectuals were or ought to be doing, substantively speaking, was often regarded as a rather esoteric exercise, irrelevant to the ‘real’ business of historians, since the importance of ideas (and, by extension ‘intellectuals’) in motivating human conduct tended to be downplayed. ¹ Second, on a related point, the gradual loss of confidence in Idealism in particular as a system of thought during the first half of the twentieth century tended to affect the prestige accorded to at least a certain kind of intellectual, since Idealism had not only offered a strong argument for why ideas were important, but had also been highly influential in practice. Thus in post-war works dealing with political theory, to take but one example, it became something of a commonplace to complain plaintively that there was no modern equivalent of the Idealist intellectual Bernard Bosanquet, who had successfully combined the writing of grand normative theory – in The Philosophical Theory of the State (1923 [1899]) – with espousing a clear and interventionist public doctrine, through his work with the Charity Organisation Society (COS). ² Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the long underlying tradition of presenting the British (generally conflated with ‘the English’) as inherently ‘practical’ by nature, difficult to seduce with theories that are unworldly, unrealisable or downright dangerous – unlike their excitable continental European cousins – has underpinned a scepticism towards the supposed purveyors of those theories, namely, the intellectuals. Whether it be Walter Bagehot praising the ‘dull government’ of the mid-Victorian era (Bagehot, 1856, pp. 81–5), ³ L. T. Hobhouse decrying the effects of Hegelian ‘theory’ as the Gothas flew overhead in the First World War (Hobhouse, 1918, p. 6) ⁴ or Michael Oakeshott warning thinkers away from the pretensions of the philosophes, in other words (Oakeshott, 1991 [1962], pp. 138–9), ⁵ British commentators have rarely missed the opportunity of congratulating themselves on their escape from the kind of continental intellectual who supposedly attempts to impose their theories de haut en bas on an unsuspecting public. Underpinned by some genuinely different social and political experiences in the twentieth century – such as those of the 1930s and 1940s, for example – this Whiggish story has therefore continued to exercise a powerful hold over the British imagination, to the point that commentators have tended to deny that Britain has any ‘real’ intellectuals at all, in the true sense of the word. Indeed, a common reaction among even highly educated people, when asked about the role of British intellectuals in the last century, is likely to be quite simply: ‘were there any?’.

For this reason, Stefan Collini's investigation into the nature of what it meant to be an intellectual in twentieth-century Britain is both timely and long overdue. A major strength of the book is that as well as relentlessly pursuing the question of why the British have been so strenuous in denying the existence of their intellectuals historically, Collini seeks to ground his analysis in a careful distinction between the different senses of the term. His classification is not uncontroversial, since it rejects some of the traditional intuitions that many have concerning the term, but it is nevertheless very penetrating. Initially, the classification consists of distinguishing between using the term ‘intellectual’ in three distinct ways, namely the ‘sociological’, the ‘subjective’ and the ‘cultural’ (Collini, 2006, pp. 45–52), with the former referring to usage that attempts to label ‘intellectual’ as a socio-professional category, and the ‘subjective’ to evaluative usage that identifies a particular person or group as ‘genuinely’ intellectual – often associating this with a commitment to truth telling, reflection and analysis for its own sake. But although identifying these senses of the term is important to Collini, and although he makes it clear his three types are not mutually exclusive, it rapidly becomes apparent that it is the ‘cultural’ sense that is his main focus. By this he means to refer to the case where someone has both achieved a certain level of creative and/or analytical attainment in a certain field, together with a (deserved) reputation for expertise in that field, but also seeks to ‘speak out’ more generally on social and/or cultural issues, and has the access to the appropriate media (and a receptive public) to be able to do so. It is in this sense that Collini believes that intellectuals are often said to be absent in Britain, or at least ‘no longer to exist’, and he maintains that it is precisely because of this internal tension within the concept itself – namely that intellectuals are expected to be both genuine specialists in a particular field, but also to speak more generally on cultural issues – than because there is anything especially exceptional about the British experience. In other words, because intellectuals are by definition straddling an uncomfortable divide, they are vulnerable to a dual charge. On the one hand, there has been a constant, indeed repetitive, claim ever since the mid-nineteenth century at least that increasing specialisation of academic disciplines associated with the professionalisation of universities has led to the death of the independent intellectual, able to speak directly to the public at large. But on the other hand, the need for intellectuals to provide pronouncements that are – at least in part – genuinely learned and sophisticated means that their continued existence is equally vulnerable to the charge that their audience is ceasing to exist, because the public are ‘dumbing down’. And in such circumstances, Collini maintains, any excessive populism on an intellectual's part reveals their divided identity, since the ‘caustic muttering’ of their peers sends them rapidly back to ‘the conference and paper-giving circuit’ (p. 58). In short, therefore, Collini believes the British denial that intellectuals exist has a great deal more to do with the structural tensions inherent in the concept itself, and very much less to do with the objectively exceptional nature of nineteenth and twentieth-century British history.

This then is Collini's case, and before mounting any criticism of it, it should be said that it is one he makes with considerable sophistication and lucidity. Particularly impressive is his determination to prove that, despite the repeated claims that the British are unique in denying that they have any intellectuals worthy of the name, in fact this is a trait that is common to a number of other European countries and the United States – with the partial exception of France. Indeed, Collini reveals tellingly, in such countries as Italy and the US, Britain is actually cited as a place where intellectuals are valued properly – in contrast to the lamentable state of affairs at home (p. 215, p. 224). Moreover, the sheer amount of erudite supporting detail that Collini provides when discussing Britain is most impressive, not only tracing the usage of the word ‘intellectual’ throughout the twentieth century, and the gradual development of the distinction between ‘high’, ‘middle’ and ‘lowbrow’, but also discussing more substantively a number of key intellectuals, such as T. S. Eliot, George Orwell and A. J. Ayer. And the text is enlivened throughout with Collini's dry wit, which very effectively skewers some deserving targets – among them Edward Said's over-romantic picture of intellectuals put forward in his Reith Lectures (pp. 427–32), Brian Harrison's idolisation of Margaret Thatcher at the expense of valid intellectual criticism (pp. 193–4) and repeated sloppy journalistic claims about the ‘death of the intellectual’.

However, no book is perfect, and, interesting and important though it undoubtedly is, Collini's argument is not above criticism. In particular, there are three areas where one could query his position, and though the first two consist more of queries rather than complaints, the third represents a more serious criticism. First, one could take issue with the choice of intellectuals that he decides to discuss, since not only do some notable thinkers such as (for example) Raymond Williams and Bertrand Russell make only cursory appearances, but also one gets relatively little sense of intellectual ‘low-life’ – such as (for example) Arthur Bryant, Malcolm Muggeridge and Melvyn Bragg. Obviously, there is a limit to the number of people that can be discussed in even a 500–page book, but it would nevertheless be interesting to know what Collini makes of such figures, and which of them he believes count as genuine ‘intellectuals’ in his cultural sense of the word. Do such figures have enough ‘cultural authority’ to qualify, in other words, or do they tend to be too overtly partisan? Second, Collini has a disinclination to consider intellectuals who are directly concerned with politics, and so we hear little or nothing about such figures as G. D. H. Cole, Tony Crosland or John Gray, all of whom are worthy of consideration as figures who began life as academics, but have ended up having a much wider public impact. It is true that Collini specifically argues in his book that such political intellectuals function in much the same way as the rest, rejecting the idea that they deserve their own category, but it would certainly be interesting to know more about his views on whether the role of the political intellectual has changed significantly in the twentieth century. Is it the case that the changing nature of politics in the last part of the twentieth century, and especially the tendency to conceptualise it as purely the satisfaction of individual wants, has made it more difficult to be a genuine political intellectual? Or does this romanticise the degree to which the government and the public were ever willing to listen to such figures? The closest Collini gets to addressing this is in discussing R. G. Collingwood and T. S. Eliot, neither of whom were particularly concerned with trying to propagate particular detailed policies, as opposed to a more general vision of society in general. It would be interesting to know more about Collini's thoughts on this matter.

However, aside from these queries, there is arguably a more general problem with Collini's argument which needs addressing. There is no doubt that he does an excellent job in identifying an implicit tension within the very concept of ‘the intellectual’, and uses this insight successfully to question the degree to which there ever was a ‘golden age’ in which the independent intellectual particularly flourished. This certainly helps to explode a number of myths. But it has to be said that he argues his case in such a way as to suggest that this is always the most important factor affecting the status of the intellectual in twentieth-century Britain – the message throughout Absent Minds is constantly that plus ça change, plus c'est la měme chose. So whatever else has altered in the twentieth century, Collini seems to argue, whether it be the increase in the number of students being educated at university, the decline in religious belief or, on a more abstract level, the impact of positivism and the rise of the social sciences – just to take a few examples – it remains the case, he thinks, that the role of the intellectual remains relatively constant. For whatever the significance of the other changes that have occurred, he implies, it has continually been the case that intellectuals have had to fight for the attention of a relatively small educated audience over the course of the twentieth century, and this is something that has not fundamentally altered very much. In short, while there may be other pressures on intellectuals, Collini seems to maintain, the biggest difficulty in maintaining their role successfully is always the tension within the role itself.

However, this seems something of an exaggeration, and I think it risks underestimating the importance that various fundamental changes in British society during the twentieth century, both practically and theoretically, have had upon the way in which intellectuals have functioned. In particular, this is so for three reasons. First, Collini's argument is in danger of underestimating the importance of the status that intellectuals have in society, as opposed to the simple size of their audience. Thus it may well be the case that intellectuals have always tended to influence only a relatively small audience directly, but nevertheless the degree to which they are more widely respected makes a big difference to the extent to which they are able to influence a more general public audience. Rather than seeing intellectuals merely as having a particular, limited group of people to appeal to, in other words, their influence also ought to be measured in terms of how successful they have been in making their ideas hegemonic within society, or at the very least in permeating other discourses successfully. This has arguably become harder in later periods of the twentieth century, since the deference accorded to intellectuals per se has tended to erode. Second, on a related point, the increasingly fragmented nature of British society since the 1960s in particular has set distinctly novel (if not perhaps insoluble) problems for a particular kind of intellectual. For such a situation has arguably caused particular problems for intellectuals seeking to articulate moral values that are common to the whole of society, especially for those basing their view around religious norms. And this has perhaps been especially the case for Anglican thinkers and clergymen, in view of the stake they undoubtedly have in articulating such a common, national morality. Finally, on a more abstract level, in some periods the general nature of the intellectual climate has arguably made it harder for intellectuals to function more successfully than in others, since the importance of abstract and philosophical ideas has been given a lower status, making intellectuals’ ability to theorise and recommend more difficult. In particular, due to the impact that various forms of positivism had upon many areas of the humanities between (approximately) the 1930s and the 1970s, intellectuals to some extent found it harder to fulfil their traditional role, since their ability to recommend positive courses of action had been undermined by the strong distinction between fact and value that positivism insisted upon.

To amplify these points somewhat, I would like to cite two examples to support my criticism. At the risk of repetition, it should be stressed that in doing so I am not seeking to undermine Collini's essential argument that intellectuals will always be torn between the general and particular, between the specialist and the populariser, but simply to suggest that his overemphasis of this point is in danger of underplaying the diversity of ways in which intellectuals have functioned in twentieth-century Britain – arguably the reality is more dynamic and complex. First therefore, to make the point that objective social changes can affect the way in which intellectuals function, I would like to pick up the example of Anglican intellectuals, to demonstrate how it became increasingly difficult for them to maintain their traditional role due to changes in British society towards the end of the twentieth century. ⁶ At bottom this is because most of them were wedded to a particular vision of British society and the state, conceptualising the former as an organic community, with (potentially at least) a common set of moral values, and the latter as the best means of upholding such common moral values. Thus particularly before the Second World War, but arguably throughout much of the twentieth century, the mainstream of Anglican intellectuals, such as William Temple and A. D. Lindsay, sought to argue that it continued – as in the Victorian era – to be the state's role to moralise the people, and that the established church was vital to this task. Explicitly rejecting the views of those such as J. N. Figgis who argued that the only way for Anglicans (and by extension Anglican intellectuals) to offer genuinely profitable moral guidance was to advocate disestablishment of the Anglican Church, therefore, on the basis that moral consensus within British society was no longer possible in an age of mass democracy, thinkers such as Temple and Lindsay explicitly relied on the idea that British society was homogeneous enough for the state to play the desired moral role (Figgis, 1910, p. 44; 1912, p. 75; Temple, 1928, p. 198; Lindsay, 1943, p. 52). For although Temple and Lindsay specifically denied that the state could enforce moral conduct directly, and hence were sceptical of any wholesale attempt to substitute a welfare state for genuine charity within society, they nevertheless felt that the state could perform a vital role as the articulator of moral values, and sought to help it do so on a wide range of issues, including on the general strike, the appeasement of the Nazis and on the abdication crisis (e.g. Temple, 1928, pp. 157–8, pp. 169–70; 1968, p. 184).

However, the breakdown of a shared consensus over what constituted appropriate moral values in the 1960s and 1970s, partly caused by extensive immigration, partly by a rebellion against government restrictions on personal liberties and partly by a decline in religious belief and church attendance, meant that such Anglican intellectuals were left in a poor position to respond to the challenges of a new historical situation. For increasingly the response of the state to such a situation was to become more morally neutral, seeking to balance the claims of different groups in society, rather than advocating any one particular moral position, whether recommended by the Anglican Church or anyone else. Indeed, significantly, latterly the very term ‘community’ itself became increasingly a matter of dispute, so that rather than simply referring to the nation, it tended to be appropriated by a range of overlapping and competing ‘communities’ that each claimed rights of their own, so that even advocates of the concept worried that ‘any attempt to recreate an overall sense of community is likely to involve the risk of coercing individuals into substantive agreement about the ends of life and the goals that individuals ought to value and pursue’ (Plant et al., 1980, p. 227). And in such circumstances Anglican intellectuals have struggled to retain their cultural authority, despite some notable attempts at doing so such as the Faith in the City report (ACUPA, 1985), since neither the government nor the public at large have been particularly receptive to their message – or willing to accord them the status they seek to retain. So rather than focusing on the continuing internal tension within the concept of ‘the intellectual’ itself, arguably of more significance here is how the changing nature of society has affected the options available for would-be intellectuals – the option of being one who advocates national moral values, and perhaps of being a ‘national’ intellectual more generally, has receded.

Second, on a more abstract level, the degree to which intellectuals can function well can also be affected by the philosophical climate within which they are working. Once again, it is important to stress that this does not negate the importance of the internal tension that is inherent to the concept itself; rather, what is being argued is that what are regarded as relatively unassailable intellectual tenets within a specific situation can have an important impact on the extent to which intellectuals can operate successfully, and that this may be as important a consideration to take into account. In particular, as I suggested earlier, I think that the impact of positivism to some extent limits the options of intellectuals in the period between the 1930s and the 1970s, and especially in the two decades straight after the Second World War, particularly in the moral and political sphere. This is so because positivism posits such a sharp distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘value’, hence somewhat undermining the authority that an intellectual has to recommend particular courses of action. Furthermore, it often also sharply differentiates philosophy and practice, which also has an impact on the authority of a certain kind of intellectual. Because positivism tends to maintain that there are no rational means of deriving value-laden courses of action from either strictly factual statements or philosophical ones, in other words, the intellectual's authority is arguably somewhat diminished, especially in the moral and political sphere – he or she must generally seek authority from a less august source, whether it be (for example) tradition or self-interest.

Such a claim is admittedly a fairly bold one, and there is only space to state it relatively baldly here; to justify it fully would require both considerable amplification and indeed some qualification. Thus, as Collini himself points out in his chapter on A. J. Ayer, the very insistence on an absence of philosophical authority for the determining of practical choices can, paradoxically, itself be an important source of authority – since it can strongly assist with the debunking of metaphysical claims in a historical situation where they are still prevalent (p. 398). (Another example would be that of H. L. A. Hart, whose insistence on the sharp distinction between morality and law was influential – especially in his well-known debates with Patrick Devlin – in helping to undermine the idea that laws could be legitimately morally prescriptive [compare Hart, 1963]). Furthermore, disentangling precisely what causes different forms of positivism within this period and what their respective effects are upon intellectual debate is a highly complex task which remains underexplored by intellectual historians. Thus the degree to which positivist hegemony in this period rests upon the linguistic positivism of T. D. Weldon, on the ‘ordinary language’ philosophy that replaced it or rather more practically on the perceived success of ‘welfare capitalism’, and what exactly their respective effects were intellectually and societally, are questions that have yet to be fully answered (see Bell, 1988 [1960]; Ryle, 2000 [1949]; Weldon, 1953). But despite this, there seems little doubt that the hegemony of positivism had an important impact on the way in which at least some intellectuals justified their arguments in this period – since, despite Collini's contention, the rejection of philosophical authority often left intellectuals in a less powerful position to recommend than they would have liked. (Just to take one striking, and perhaps surprising, example of this, the conservative intellectual Michael Oakeshott, who was in many ways the very epitome of an anti-positivist, being a strong critic of positivistic social science, was nevertheless left floundering when it came to explaining why the disciplines that he did support [particularly ‘History’ and ‘Poetry’] should take the form they did, since he largely followed the positivist consensus in downplaying the prescriptive power of philosophy [see Oakeshott, 1991 [1962, p. 491].) ⁷ Furthermore, more practically, Oakeshott's scepticism of the power of philosophy and his substitution of its authority with that of tradition left him struggling to explain which bits of tradition contemporaries were meant to uphold (see Winch, 1958, pp. 62–5). ⁸ It seems clear that the hegemony of positivism in the middle decades of the twentieth century had a significant impact on the ways in which intellectuals formulated their arguments, therefore, and, as such, is another case where the most important thing to be said about the nature of intellectuals is not simply that they are suspended between being specialists and popularisers. Instead, arguably in such a case something rather more substantive needs to be said about the way in which a particular context allows intellectuals to function – and equally about the ways it limits them.

Overall, therefore, it is clear that I feel there are some dangers as well as successes inherent in Collini's project. But it would be entirely wrong to end on a negative note. Overall his book is not merely stylish and witty, but highly erudite and largely convincing. It represents a bracing counterblast to the dreary (and all too frequent) repetition of the claim that the British have no intellectuals, and it deserves to be frequently read and long pondered. I hope he will find some of my queries interesting.