The intellectual catwalk

The world's top public intellectuals are on the campaign trail again. It's time to cast a vote. 

It seems to be list time again – but then it always seems to be list time. It is hard to remember a month over the past ten years when one opened a newspaper or magazine without being confronted by a list of somebody’s favourite something to adjudicate on. Even publications at the higher end of the media food chain like Foreign Policy, the doyen of politics magazines, are in on the act. No problem. If it helps us think about people, issues and things – and it is a bit of fun on the side – it is a happy convention.

Time Magazine has just published its latest 100 "world influencers" to stir up debate and now Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine have teamed up again – they did it last in 2005 – to identify the world’s top "public intellectuals". How do you qualify for this accolade? Well, by the rules of the game you have to be (a) living, (b) active in public life, (c) have shown distinction in your field and, (d) have shown an ability to influence debate across borders. So when all that is taken into account the field narrows considerably and excludes most of us.

To help us along, the magazines have published 100 names whom they deem to be the intellectual movers and shakers in the world today. They are asking us to send them our top five from their list and offering the opportunity to add a sixth if we feel there is a case for someone they have left out. Voting can be done by logging on to Prospect magazine. You can check out the unfamiliar names in the potted biographies given on the websites.

The list makes interesting reading. It is a kind of snapshot of the intellectual ferment prevailing in the world today. There is an additional article by Christopher Hitchens in this month’s Prospect in which he analyses the implications of the list and how the picture it presents has changed even since 2005. "A notable change in the past few years," Hitchens observes, "has been the disjunction of the term (intellectual) from its old association with the left, and with the secular. Eric Hobsbawm was ranked 18th out of 100 in 2005 – he was 88 years old – but this year, with the exception of Slavoj Zizek (Slovenian sociologist and philosopher), I don’t think there is a single person on the list who still self-identifies as a Marxist." What hard times for that school of philosophy!

He notes as evidence of the erosion of the secular lobby – despite his own best efforts to downgrade God with his God is not Great book last year – that the Pope is on the list as are a number of committed Muslims. Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher and defender of religion, offers a counterpoint to Richard Dawkins and Hitchens himself. Both are on the list and came in among the top ten in the 2005 poll. It will be interesting to see if the poll results show the same change in composition as the offered long list shows.

Needless to say, the poll is not asking whether you approve of what an intellectual says. Rather it ask for your assessment of their influence – regardless of whether one considers it influence for good or ill. But it seems inevitable that the final result will reflect approval and some kind of identification with those voted for. On that basis the list of top ten (with votes garnered) from 2005 might be a little puzzling.

1 Noam Chomsky 4827
2 Umberto Eco 2464
3 Richard Dawkins 2188
4 Václav Havel 1990
5 Christopher Hitchens 1844
6 Paul Krugman 1746
7 Jürgen Habermas 1639
8 Amartya Sen 1590
9 Jared Diamond 1499

10 Salman Rushdie 1468

One suspects that marketing might be as much a factor in the choices made as the actual thought of the poll leaders.

In that poll Pope Benedict XVI, elected just six months earlier, came in at number 17. Where will he be this time? Surely the power of his mind and the quality of his thought, not least in the powerful analyses of the human condition and human society and its needs on his recent visit to America will have raised his rating. International affairs, civic responsibility and the nature of civic society, education, moral behaviour, family and society were all covered. Is there any intellectual in the world today who is presenting a picture of ourselves as we need to have it presented as he does?

The results will be released on the internet in late June and in the magazines in the July editions. I can’t wait.

Michael Kirke is a freelance writer in Dublin.