The intellectual is an endangered species. In place of such people as Bertrand Russell, Raymond Williams or Hannah Arendt - people with genuine learning, breadth of vision and a concern for public issues - we now have only facile pundits, think tank apologists and spin-doctors. In the age of the knowledge economy, we have somehow managed to combine the widest ever participation in higher education with the most dumbed-down of cultures. In this urgent and passionate book, Frank Furedi explains the essential contribution of intellectuals both to culture and to democracy - and why we need to recreate a public sphere in which intellectuals and the general public can talk to each other again.
Author Biography
Frank Furedi is Professor in Sociology at the University of Kent. His previous books include Culture of Fear (Continuum), Paranoid Parenting (Penguin) and Therapy Culture (Routledge). http://www.frankfuredi.com/
