Birth of the Intellectuals: 1880-1900

Who exactly are the ‘intellectuals’? This term is so widely used today that we forget that it is a recent invention, dating from the late nineteenth century.

In Birth of the Intellectuals, the renowned historian and sociologist Christophe Charle shows that the term ‘intellectuals’ first appeared at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and the neologism originally signified a cultural and political vanguard who dared to challenge the status quo. Yet the word, expected to disappear once the politic...