The Democratisation of Public Debate in Poland: A Crisis of Intellectuals?
The Democratisation of Public Debate in Poland: A Crisis of Intellectuals?

Summary/Abstract: The critique of the role intellectuals play in public life has a long tradition and features prominently in the thinking of Karl Mannheim, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Richard Posner. Mannheim attributes the decline of the social authority of intellectuals to the process of the democratisation of culture, which involves reducing the hierarchical distances between the elites and the so called rank-and-file. This paper aims at discussing whether the Western category of public intellectuals and the concept of the democratisation of culture can be used in the analysis of their status in public debate in Poland. The legacy of the Polish intelligentsia does not translate directly to the shape and quality of contemporary public debate, and the democratisation of both the media and ideas creates a demand for new types of intellectual activity.

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