Week 4 Response Assignment Paper: The Intellectuals

WEEK 4 RESPONSE PAPER
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Week 4 Response Paper
In the process of reading the two essays, each essay ignites different reaction towards the issue being focused on. In the first essay on Intellectuals, the argument surrounding whether the intellectuals represents the notion of an individual person or group comes up. Notably, the author tends to refute the notion that intellectuals tends to represent a social class, which sets itself apart from the other common people. The second essay analyzes the study of philosophy, with the author arguing that Marxist philosophy is a collective activity that involves dissemination of ideas. From a personal perspective, I agree with the authors that philosophy is not a strange of difficult subject since both specialists and professionals can understand the intellectual activity.[The Study of Philosophy, 322]
On the essay entitled “The Intellectuals”, I agree with the argument that all men are potentially intellectuals because every individual possesses an intellect. However, not all individuals are intellectuals based on social function. This implies that in the functional sense, all intellectuals fall into two groups. To start with, there are ‘traditional’ professional intellectuals whose position in the society has a certain inter-class aura. Second, there are those intellectuals who are considered as ‘organic’as a result of their thinking and organizing element. It can be argued that organic intellectuals can be differentiated by their profession, particularly on the basis of their job characteristics. These individuals tend to direct their aspirations and ideas based on class or organic elements. They rely on increasingly original schema, which bears the elements of Gramsci’s thoughts. I also agree with the argument that all human beings are philosophers and philosophical ideologies have a specific culture.[The Intellectuals, 3]
In the second essay, the author argues that it is impossible to separate philosophy from its history, just in the same way that culture cannot be separated from its history. This implies that an individual cannot be a philosopher without coherent conception of philosophy. Therefore, the way an individual conceives the world is as a result of the way he responds to various challenges and problems. Every language is made up of elements of world and of culture and this implies that every language is made up of various complexities of the world. Therefore, a culture can be translated depending on the language which an individual speaks. Therefore, a new culture can be created depending on the original discoveries of an individual. From a personal perspective, I agree with the author when he argues that it is possible to form a culture depend...