“We cannot feel that we understand a thing
until we can give an account of the causes and its modus operandi” Aristotle.
The purpose of higher education in society is amongst others to give ‘a person a clear conscious view of his opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them’[1]; in short manufacture intellectuals. The above purpose is a synoptic recapitulation of scholarship’s wholeness, it captures the essence of how the continued vitality and greatness of human philosophic traditions are fundamental to academic teaching, scientific and scholarly research, and creative cultural life. This imbues on a field of study or discipline the role of claiming scientific status only when it produces such persons, and preferably within a dispensation that is peer refereed. In this refereeing, the science pursued, in and by the discipline, should not calibrate a monolithic outlook, but demand to admit into that scientific community those opposed to the ‘dominant outlook’, and not for the sake of opposition, but to create opportunities for a fruitful conflict in order to broaden the intellectual range, thereby allowing scholarly achievement and intellectual quality to be decisive. The targeted human faculties to be developed in higher education should, be streamlined into fields of study organized as clusters of human interest and utility in order to create a community of scholars and students engaged in the task of seeking the truth, and its universality.
The purpose of higher education in society is amongst others to give ‘a person a clear conscious view of his opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them’[1]; in short manufacture intellectuals. The above purpose is a synoptic recapitulation of scholarship’s wholeness, it captures the essence of how the continued vitality and greatness of human philosophic traditions are fundamental to academic teaching, scientific and scholarly research, and creative cultural life. This imbues on a field of study or discipline the role of claiming scientific status only when it produces such persons, and preferably within a dispensation that is peer refereed. In this refereeing, the science pursued, in and by the discipline, should not calibrate a monolithic outlook, but demand to admit into that scientific community those opposed to the ‘dominant outlook’, and not for the sake of opposition, but to create opportunities for a fruitful conflict in order to broaden the intellectual range, thereby allowing scholarly achievement and intellectual quality to be decisive. The targeted human faculties to be developed in higher education should, be streamlined into fields of study organized as clusters of human interest and utility in order to create a community of scholars and students engaged in the task of seeking the truth, and its universality.
The truth to be sought, should be
within the context defining to that society, and should not vitiate the Confucian
edict that ‘any amount of discovered truth, is only a thread that connects the
rest’[2]
, including what is outside the context that created it. The truths sought
through scientific inquests, in order to serve its public, demand from those
engaged in the truth seeking process to do so through honest and unencumbered
research. Encumbrance referred to herein can either be ideological, class
defending or promoting, and/or socio-political. Participants in scientific
‘truth’ seeking endeavours would thus have to first understand that, what
brings them together as a discipline community is their membership to it,
otherwise the diversity of their interests will constitute all conditions
precedent for continued co-existence. Whence it is important to note that, in
this quest, the unity of their knowledge must at all times culminate in the
vision of a science pursued. As a consequence, the inherent life of those in
science and scholarship expeditions should in itself have as an outcome,
appropriate intellectualism that is of the highest order; and it should define a
standard for anyone in the discipline community to claim the title of being either
an intellectual or scholar. This standardisation is based, and strictly so, on
a truism that, intellectuals do not worship a science and/or discipline, but
rather worship its continued validity when tested against new discoveries,
findings and innovations.
The almost xenophobic
relationship that science has with dogmatism and theoretical rigidity, procures
from humanity the production of intellectuals that establish a knowledge regime
that can only be changed by higher order discoveries which do not alter its basis,
templates and algorithms. This calls for the elevation of experience as the
theatre of science, to be the arbiter of
final instance for all assumptions because science is in itself not the whole
of thought[3],
but a proverbial ‘thread’ of Confucian parlance. The need to grovel in the
knowledge of being and the intricacies of how to coordinate human activities
efficiently, requires intellectual traditions that continuously aggregates
information into representations that enable human transactions to radiate
equity and fairness. These representations define knowledge as the currency
through which such transactions can be defined, packaged and exchanged. This
will in fact define why science only becomes an end in itself to the extent
that it expresses humanity’s thirst for knowledge. The standardisation and
norming of what constitutes an acquired state of knowledge at particular
epoch’s of humanity’s growth trajectory further defines competencies required
to continue being defined as an intellectual and/or scholar in the ensuing
epochs, lest the intellect with be standard to the era it represents, and
irrelevant in future terms.
The role of intellectuals and
scholars in society remains relevant in so far as it is able to sustain the
logics that structure the ideas they trade and transact with in the ever
changing market for human solutions. The efficiency of these ideas as solutions
for humanity’s challenges is reflected in their simplicity, and as clues for
future innovations. Because intellectualism and scholarship are a tremendous
social innovation, what intellectuals and/or scholars transact with as ideas
becomes not only a currency for the most advanced of social interactions, but
the building blocks of what governs human economics, in its strictest sense of
supply and demand. Given that the omnipresent incentive for an intellectual
and/or scholar is not only peer legitimation, but the tenure of the ideas that
they posit into an unconstrained and academically free (discipline) society,
their accountability to these ideas is the ‘essence’ of their continued
existence.
The availability of opportunities
for intellectuals and/or scholars to be ‘scandalously asinine without harming
their reputation’[4],
demands therefore an inherent accountability to those external to their world,
and discipline community. Their sovereignty as individuals will thus be always
proscribed by their social position’s limitation to be ‘in alliance to a clear
socio-political or otherwise agenda’, unless formally subscribed to it. It is
in the silences that are at work where the legitimacy and value of intellectuals
and scholars in society are questioned that an inquest into their ‘national
asset character and form’ should be made. The perceived and/or real repository
of knowledge by society of and about intellectuals and scholars has thus far
insulated them from social standards many of them set. Their John Stuart Mill[5]
characterisation as ‘the most cultivated intellects in society’, and notwithstanding
the ‘wretched nature of education and social arrangements’ they originate from
and/or ideationalize within, acutes the discourse on how an asset they are to
societies and nations.
It should however be cautioned
that to be an intellectual and/or scholar, is not an ‘ex officio’ title that you simply earn by having passed a degree
or level of education or belonging to a certain profession’[6].
That a person who possess a university degree is an intellectual, is in fact an
established orthodoxy. It has thus far served only to reduce a degree into some
abstracted price for the journey a person has gone through in ‘intellectual and
scholar dominated environments’ without any functional evidence of him/her
having been able to emerge whence from as such. Whilst it is also true that
university education prepares an individual, as a sovereign being, for an
intellectual and/or scholarship career, it will be a mere typological exercise
to call him/her an intellectual if we are not going to interrogate the extent
to which they function as such. It is only until they display the capacity to
‘command influence an the general and specific trends in society by mastering
the oral and written means of persuasion[7],
and without detaching from their originative-historical-background[8],
and being able to control the ensemble of fragilities aggregated in what
defines their scientific status to stay relevant’, that we can call them
intellectuals and/or scholars. The continuities inherent in the above
characterisation abstracts what will make them assets.
The role of intellectuals is ‘to uncover
and elucidate the contest, to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and
the normalized quiet of unseen power, wherever and whenever possible. This they
do because there is a social and intellectual equivalence between this mass of
overbearing collective interests and the discourse used to justify, disguise or
mystify its workings while at the same time preventing objections or challenges
to it’. Whist it is difficult to inventorize the entire gamut on theoretical
definitions and explanations of what is an intellectual, the Gramscian vernacular
provides an aptly received context. Like
Dahrendorf, who submits that ‘all
intellectuals have the duty to doubt everything that is obvious, to make
relative all authority, to ask all those questions that no one else dares to
ask’[9];
Gramsci (1971) theorizes intellectuals through their social role(s).‖In his
quest to answer the questions on the autonomous or independent nature of
intellectuals within society, Gramsci submits that intellectuals should be seen
from two perspectives[10].
They are either organic or traditional.
As organic intellectuals they are created from within their own class, as an elaboration
of its the course of development, and are for the most part representative of
the new social type which the new class has brought into prominence[11].
They are traditional intellectuals when they represent an historical continuity
uninterrupted even by the most complicated and radical changes in political and
social forms[12].
In Foucaultian countenance, and
juxtaposing to the Gramscian submission above, intellectuals are seen as being
universal and specific, and co-existing at every epoch of human existence[13].
In their universal state intellectuals represent ‘the man of justice, the man
of law, who counterposes to power, despotism‖ and therefore it is possible to
advance that this figure derived from the jurist or notable’[14].
In their specific state intellectuals, can be seen as the by-product of
specific historical conditions that serve as the basis for ideational activity
that has made it possible for the intellectual ‘to develop lateral connections
across different forms of knowledge, and‖ has opened up the possibility of the
emergence of an intellectual of a new kind, that is visible within specific
sectors, at the precise points where their own conditions of life and work
would have situated them. It is thus
prudent to posit that universal intellectuals will be judgemental in form and
character, of course in an abstract sense, specific intellectuals should be
construed as being more savant and philosophic. Specific intellectuals would
display a ‘true north’ in their truth seeking journeys. It is in this aspect of
universal, specific, traditional or organic nature of intellectuals that their
asset character is foregrounded. The common feature to them all is the desire
for a knowledge of eternal verities.
The asset character of an
intellectual in societies that have in the main being consumers of ideas traded
for and about them in their ideas markets is a function of the continued
utility value of the very ideas transacted and traded. In Mathebula’s[15]
parlance, the question will always be to what extent are those ideas, ideas
about that society, ideas of that society, ideas from that society, and ideas
of that society? Answers to these questions require a separate study and
inquest, save to indicate that when found, a convergence of unknown
catastrophes might be found lying therein. It is however in the degree to which
these ideas impact on society or procure for a change driven mindset in society
that their originative-historical-background-complexity will derive their asset
or otherwise relevance, and thus defining to the asset nature of the intellectual
and/or scholar. The extent to which intellectuals fuse intellectual power with
deep moral concern and socio-political engagement, within an otherwise
provincialized academic-scholar-intellectual complex, defines their knowledge
outputs on society’s ideas and innovation balance sheet; are they assets or
liabilities? In an attempt to distinguish the value of intellectuals and/or
scholars, Sowell[16]
introduces interesting categorisations of viewing them as an occupation group,
a qualitatively labelled set and an honorifically titled cohort. This thus then
aggregates all that ‘qualify through accepted criteria’ to can receive the
title of an intellectual or scholar into ‘assets’ in the narrowed sense of its
definition.
An asset is defined as an item or
property owned, regarded as having value and available to meet debts,
commitments or legacies; it is ‘something
valuable that an entity owns, benefits from, or has use of, in generating value
and/or income[17]. It thus also
mean a useful or valuable thing or person. In both definitions the value and
usefulness of an item or person qualifies it to be regarded as an asset. Its
capacity to be used to meet debts, commitments and legacies defines its
posterity value and character. It is in the posterity character of an asset, of
which its elements should include continued appreciation in usefulness and
value, that an asset stays on the balance sheet as record of value juxtaposed
against real or perceived liabilities. The license therefore of an intellectual
and/or scholar to be regarded as an asset can either be in occupation
description, honorific and/or qualitative. In occupation and honorific terms,
the value can be computed on the basis of the cost of producing the
intellectual and/or scholar and extrapolate his/her value through an actuarial
exercise that discounts current usefulness and yet having been a cost to
society. In South Africa, this can be the sum total of all subsidies the state
made at the time of the educational occurrence of the intellectual, as calculated
in current monetary value. This honorific and occupation ascribing of value,
makes the discourse on whether an intellectual is an asset or not an oxymoron,
for the very title of intellectual denotes some asset value and character. It
is for this reason that intellectuals as social infrastructure, more
particularly in ideational terms, are subjected to emerging accounting and
related theories of analysis to justify their asset nature and character, thus
migrating them from the John Stuart Mill facile characterisation as ‘thinking
minds…the best and wisest’ to a ‘how an intellectual asset they are’
re-characterisation.
In the infrastructure field of
study and/or discipline the value of an asset is continuously revisited to
calculate its current value based on a set of criteria. This exercise is also
aimed at investigating the degree to which an asset is encumbered versus its
ability to still be useful in terms of what it is supposed to do within the
business or otherwise environment it is expected to perform. This environment
includes new policy requirements, technological demands and lately
environmental protection regulations emanating from the global warming and
related international treaties and protocols. The review of the asset nature of
any infrastructure is normally triggered by a preponderance of new technology
and/or innovations in how the service received from an already existing and
amortised infrastructure is still required or methods of getting it are
relevant. The advent of the new generally creates obsoleteness in the old, thus
making the old to either recalibrate into the new or stay useless and/or
stranded in the world of the new. This condition is punishingly omnipresent in
the ideational, intellectual and scholarship sector of society. This is so
because as an intellectual and/or scholar you are expected to have a capacity
to outmode own conclusions as the new makes them. It is in the relativity of
your findings with new truths, theories, trends and innovations that your right
to remain a scholar and/or intellectual is etched. In ideational terms an
intellectual as an asset would therefore need to be continuously valuable and
useful.
It is in this context that the
concept of stranded intellectuals is herein posited to deal with the value and
usefulness of intellectuals and scholars. The concept purports to aggregate a
condition of empty intellectualism, albeit possessing standards that are
defining a past era, and yet committing to disengage with such a past, without
impoverishing its intellectual vitality for posterity’s sake. It is derived
from the infrastructure cluster of knowledge, where an asset is classified as stranded
when it has assets ‘suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs,
devaluations or conversion to liabilities’. It becomes stranded because of a
range of risks that are poorly understood and regularly mispriced, and resulting
in a significant over-exposure to unsustainable assets throughout the system. In
value terms a stranded asset is a valued instrument that is not performing well in its
market, but must be kept on a financial statement in order to record it as a loss or profit. These can thus be explained as assets
that have become obsolete or non-performing, but still need to be recorded on
the balance sheet as a loss of profit. The International Energy Association (IEA)
defines stranded assets as ‘those investments which have already been made but
which, at some time prior to the end of their economic life, as assumed at the
investment decision point, are no longer able to earn an economic return’[18] .From the
foregoing it is clear that a stranded asset is
‘a resource, human or otherwise, that has ‘some value’ and yet not
performing at its optimal level, and cannot be removed from the asset register
or balance sheet. A stranded asset (of society) is thus typified by its
write-down value, the obsoleteness of its contribution, its mispricing, continuous misperceptions of
value by the uninformed, as well as a tragically misconstrued air of finality
in and/or of what it represents.
These definitions do not only
provide maximum clarity on intellectualism as being a function dependant on the
intellectual to have absorbed a ‘scientific attitude’ and ‘a mode of thought’
as a condition of truthfulness, but also show how that intellectual can be
obsolete as an asset to society and the intellectual community he/she belongs
to. The Confucius edict of ‘a thread that connects the rest’ is both revealing
in terms of what exists at a time of claiming discovery, and what may exist in
future, thus making new discoveries not only an exercise into posterity, but a
thread. It is in the variable character of knowledge, and its human nodes, when
juxtaposed against innovation, that humanity has still not been able to catch
up with its future, unless it is decisive in breaking up with what it declares
obsolete. This is recognizing to the tendency found in and amongst
intellectuals and scholars to farm disciples of their ‘gospels’ to levels where
they themselves become the proverbial ‘rock upon which their doctrine is
built’. The inherent value of what has been when accounted for on balance sheets
in their various forms is what makes it difficult for humanity to declare as
not having any value; except in nostalgic terms. In the intellectual realm a
stranded intellectual would thus be an ‘intellectual’ whose knowledge as a
transacting currency in the intellectual market has suffered from an
unanticipated devaluation caused by a range of innovations in a field of
specialisation, thus resulting in overreliance on archaic approaches in the
science.
In the Public Administration
field, the condition of stranded intellectuals is omnipresent. The norming
environment of the discipline, especially when construed within its broader
realm of Public Affairs, is not only a moving target, but a subject of continuous
review as humanity revisits the arrangements by which it has agreed to govern
itself, also called democracy. The polarity of guidelines that emanate from the
body politic instructive to public administration and Public Administration,
hereinafter represented as P/public A/administration, that is never without
tension, procures from intellectuals and scholars the institutionalisation of
changing paradigms as a condition for the survival of the discipline. The
continuous demand by the discipline to be resurrected from the ashes of
institution, its natural loci, when humanity’s ‘time of conservatism start to
alternate with times of rapid change’ is defining to the strandedness or
otherwise of its scholars. The foundation and order of being an intellectual/scholar
is thus the pursuit of truth. Where truth is permanent, it becomes the duty of
the intellectual and/or scholar to guard the context that provides a background
to that permanence. Where what was considered as truth changes as a result of
‘new’ truth, it is still the duty of the intellectual and/or scholar to guard
the context that provides a background of permanence. Inability to be agile in
intellectualism and/or scholarship as it relates the context that stays as a
background defining permanence or otherwise, defines the relevance and/or
strandedness of intellectuals in the Public Administration discipline.
The shifting base of Public
Affairs as a result of context driven concepts such as democracy, publics and
role of government demands of 21st century governance mechanisms, a heightened
sensitivity to those that intellectualise. As ‘producers and purveyors of ideas,
intellectuals produce all kinds of ideas, many ideas: ideas to rationalize and
legitimize, ideas to explain and deceive; ideas to mystify and mesmerize; ideas
to decorate and demonize; ideas to inform and entertain—all kinds of ideas’;
they should do so understanding the gravitas they command in society[19] . Whilst public
affairs has a conceptual breadth that agglomerates various disciplines for its
total understanding, in intellectual terms it can not be seen as the whole
thought for at the level of knowledge convergence it demands accountability
from those operating in the idea formation domains of humanity. This
accountability demand is etched on the omnipresent risk of intellectuals to
insulate themselves into; a community of like-minded persons; a hegemon; and a
discipleship characterised by an incestuous and self-referential discourse that
only reinforce each other’s perspectives to the exclusion of the new. The
settling in of an ipse dexitist approach to public affairs would not only
establish a one dimensional view of the core discipline of Public Administration
but discount the collective value in the quality of the civil service mind
required to meet the ‘true north’ developmental demands of society.
Stranded intellectuals can be a
result of many reasons. Depending on whether an intellectual is universal,
specific, traditional and/or organic; as an asset the intellectual remains
vulnerable to innovation, technological change and various other human inspired
revolutions that require constant update of one’s relative disposition thereto.
The extend to which an intellectual creatively destructs the knowledge base
defining the context upon which intellectualisation occurs is not only defining
to the continued value of the ideas generated by the intellectual but
determines continued relevance to society and thus social status. In Public
Administration the stranding of intellectuals is a function of how agile are
such intellectuals to the ever changing dynamic of politics as a conglomeration
of interests to be competed for and whose price is not only control of
government but capacity to muster the capability of the state to
institutionalise policies as a societal normalcy. Stranded intellectuals in Public
Administration will be those that are stuck in outmoded approaches, theories
and countenances that defined a past rejected and/or repudiated by both
practise and declaration.
[2] Confucius.
Accessed 2018. Confucius Quotes : A
Philosophy of Wisdom https://www.the-philosophy.com/confucius-quotes
[5]
Mill, JS. 1969. Utilitarianism, Collected
works of Mills, Vol X, p215. University of Toronto Press. Toronto
[6] Hyden,
G. (1967). The Failure of Africa's First
Intellectuals. Transition, (28), 14-18. doi:10.2307/2934471
[7] Hyden,
G. (1967). The Failure of Africa's First
Intellectuals. Transition, (28), 14-18.
doi:10.2307/2934471
[8] Serequeberhan,
T.1994. The Hermeneutics of African
Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse. Routledge. New York.
[9] Dahrendorf,
R.1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, pp.241-248.
[10] Gramsci,
A., 1971. Selections from Prison Notebook
(Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith translation). New York. Oxford University Press
(p.6-7)
[15] Mathebula, FM. 2012. Hegemony and Public Administration
Scholarship in South Africa. Journal for Public Administration. (47) 1:
[16] Sowell,
T. 2009. Intellectuals and Society.
Basic Books. New York (147)
[18]
IEA 2013
IEA. 2013. “Redrawing The Energy Climate Map.” World Energy
Outlook Special Report,
p.134.
[19]
Shivjy, I. 2017. Revolutionary Intellectual: Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture at
the University of Witswatersrand in South Africa on 19 October 2017.
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