Abstract

For the reader who cares about ideas, and the "intellectual life," The Last Intellectuals is a sobering book. Its basic thesis is that the post-1940s United States generation has produced no intellectuals, and that the last intellectuals belonged to the previous generation. As an academic, my initial reaction to Jacoby's thesis was one of shocked skepticism. The proof of this thesis, however, hangs on his definition of "intellectual." It soon becomes clear that what Jacoby means by the term intellectual is a non-academic who writes for the larger public, who writes on economic and political issues, who raises the consciousness of the public, who engages in cultural criticism around a sense of community - and who is a relatively independent freelancer secondarily publishing in small magazines and pamphlets. Further, not only is the intellectual a person of ideas but a writer of quality prose as well. Once these premises are accepted, Jacoby's thesis unfolds smoothly, if not inexorably