Public Moral Debate is Dying: The Problem with Public Intellectuals

In Which I Ensure the Death of My Own Substack

Public intellectuals not only diminish our collective ability to think, but within an online economy, can’t help but model the wrong virtues for thinking.

Heavy is the Head that Wears the Blue Check

In any industry, there become those standard bearers whose voices resonate larger and louder than others: it may or may not be unjust, but in any event, it simply is.¹ There are some who are more adept at carrying a public banner for a cause than others, and by virtue of hitting it big on one thing, they become a Public Intellectual. I’ll use Jordan Peterson as an example here.²

Jordan Peterson began as a Canadian professor who had written exactly one book which few people had read, until he exploded with his book Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I won’t rehearse the history here, but needless to say, Peterson’s career went from one of obscurity to one of intense public fame and scrutiny. His book is fine: there’s much to critique, and to appreciate, about what he does there, but that’s not the point of this. The point is that, in the wake of its publication, Peterson quickly became a Public Intellectual, a trained psychologist called upon to offer commentary and to have opinions about any number of things outside his direct area of competency: climate change, transgender issues, the book of Exodus.

One place, directing strangers toward any number of destinations, whether or not they have been there.

The warning I want to signal here with respect to Public Intellectuals is two-fold:

1. Public Intellectuals become proxy spokespersons, allowing others to defer thought. Is what Peterson does ostensibly to provoke debate, to foster thought? Yes. But the effect is the opposite: the Public Intellectual becomes an authority figure which people can then cite as a way of deferring thought. By turning to Peterson’s work, one can adopt the insights he offers, and because they are presented in a compelling media format, let his work do your work, which is to think and deliberate. This is not a problem unique to an online culture, but one which an online culture makes particularly susceptible to: discussions take place in real time, and as such, do not allow the time for slow thinking. It’s far more easy to let someone else’s thought do the work for you.

2. In becoming proxy spokespersons, Public Intellectuals are encouraged to become omnicompetent. If Peterson were to have limited his range to questions within psychology—his home training—not only would few people know who he was, but his influence would be very niche, and debated.³ But because he hits it big in one area, he becomes a trusted voice in many other areas.

   ***

   Again, this is not unique, and a problem which I find particular onerous in my own field of Christian Ethics: historians who are called in to be experts in moral deliberations, or Bible scholars speaking authoritatively about modernized poverty, gender, and interstate violence. It’s not to say that people can’t gain competency in various areas, but when it’s a granted authority, it expands the deferral of thought into more areas than just the one.⁴

The Public Intellectual as Public Defender

The incentives of public deliberation are no longer (at present?) a desire for truthfulness but a desire to be right, or at least, to not be wrong. What I mean by this is that, in an online economy, one stays afloat insofar as one gathers cultural force, becoming the voice of many instead of just a lone wolf. This is not to say that that Public Intellectuals are craven, only that they do not maintain this position except by saying what they (and others) deem to be right: it is in pursuit of the just, not the true, that they speak, and as such, the just must be defended.

This is endemic to public morality debates: hardened positions of debate gather steam, and build much of their force from how their position is spread. At least we can now be grateful that the war of all against all at least gets shoved into a trial by combat carried out by the few: the role of the public seems to not be amplifying the voices of the public intellectuals through retweets and repostings, not adding their own analysis to the fray.

The Public Intellectuals do not escape this dynamic of public debate: their incentives are not to pursue truthfulness, which would involve admitting error or changing our minds, but to not be wrong. In truth, it’s impossible to win most arguments, insofar as most issues unfold over time, with new possible objections emerging such that some issues don’t get resolved.

But the Public Intellectual, incentivized by remaining the Public Voice, cannot concede this: if there were future evidence which might be for revising one’s position, it would destroy the basis of being a Public Intellectual: they now speak for more than just themselves, but for the rectitude of the Position they champion. To back down is a kind of betrayal not only of the Position, but of all those who support the Public Intellectual as their proxy.

The Public Intellectual as Guardian Against Thought

In the end, having been granted the mantle of proxy of the people, the Public Intellectual now is damned to have their voice owned by whatever the people want. Their discourse is now no longer prospective, looking out beyond the immediate and pulling together pieces which might offer a new and nuanced future. Their discourse, and their ability to be the Public Intellectual, is tied to public discourse. The low-hanging fruit, the quick commentary, and recapitulation becomes the mark of their writing and speaking by necessity.

Because they speak for the many, and think for the many, the true cost is that the Public Intellectual ultimately becomes the one who stifles any future thinking. Reaction always pivots on what has been said, abandoning a line of thinking which doesn’t yet fit within the public terms of discourse; prospective thinking lies unused, as public questions of the today become the frame about which we think about everything: that anything new might be thought becomes increasingly impossible. This is why, among other reasons, that whenever NPR discusses a global tragedy, the follow up question is predictably about the economic impacts, not whether the economic impacts might have contributed to the tragedy in the first place.

Public Intellectuals, in the end, become the thing they hate: the ones who short circuit public thought. Wishing to speak for the people, they take up that responsibility and now, find their own thinking colonized by a maelstrom from which they cannot escape. They could always lay down the mantle, except that there is always one waiting to take it up.

Reading: Had a great, but quick, visit to speak for Michael Sacasas’ study center at the University of Florida. Just delightful. En route, I finally read Eugene Peterson’s Earth and Altar⁵, which resonated with a lot of what I had just talked about. Finished Mark Douglas' Modernity, The Environment, and the Just War Tradition, for an upcoming review. Beginning Confederacy of Dunces for the first time. Ivan Illich’s In the Vineyard of the Text was good, but a little too forced of an argument for me.

1. Sometimes, when I see people quoted in a story about church abuse, it’s because those are the five people with the expertise to have something meaningful to say about the issue. But that’s the exception: most of the time, it’s the people who the author knows others will listen to, which is very different than people who have expertise. They might have been granted expertise by an audience, but that doesn’t mean they know anything.

2. I can feel the unsubscribe buttons being clicked across the nation.

3. His own brand of Jungian psychology is not uncontested within his discipline, and so, would be trapped within the warp and woof of his own disciplinary world.

4. No, I’m not naming names. I have my own nemeses in this area, but they don’t have to be yours. For my case of why evangelicals need Christian ethicists to be Christian ethicists, revisit this.

5. Now published as Where Your Treasure Is. Either way, it’s worth your time.