Public intellectuals in default?

“I believe that the Filipino nation is one of the most intellectual nations in the world,” mused blogger John Ryan Recabar some years back. “Our scholars are well-respected all over the world. But why is this not seen in the country’s economic performance, political maturity and societal growth? Filipino intellectuals are among the most articulate in international conferences… but when they are in the Philippines they become dumb….

“Filipino intellectuals are detached from the hustle of ordinary Filipino lives,” he continued. “They cloak themselves with robes of erudition and pedantry. Intellectualism and knowledge production are ends in themselves…. Unless the intellectuals of this country immerse themselves in the nation’s problems and join in the great debate of Filipino-hood, they’ll remain useless erudites and pedants, or better yet books in libraries that gather nothing but dust.”

These observations and sentiments are by no means unique, and indeed are commonly heard. They need not be confined to Filipino intellectuals either. Benedict Anderson, described as one of the most prominent Southeast Asian scholars of the 20th century, made a similar lament in reference to public intellectuals in general. In a 2010 speech at the 10th anniversary of the Nippon Foundation’s Fellowships for Asian Public Intellectuals program, he deplored what he saw to be “the long-term decline of the traditional public intellectual.” This was against the backdrop of what he described as a “decade (that) started with an admirable outburst of reformist politics, but has ended depressingly with the entrenchment of oligarchies in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. In all these places, the level of economic inequality has rapidly increased, human rights have been constantly abused, and state control of the mass media has become more formidable.” And yet, Anderson noted, papers written by the program’s fellows seemed oblivious of the most critical contemporary challenges in their respective national settings.

A small workshop held in Bali over the weekend by the Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program examined the nature and role of public intellectuals in the region over the years. What exactly is a public intellectual? We all know what an intellectual is, but it is when the intellectual writes and speaks to a larger audience beyond professional colleagues in her/his own formal discipline when she/he becomes a “public intellectual.” Ralph Waldo Emerson demands more; to him, a public intellectual’s most important activity is action—bringing to mind examples like street parliamentarian Lorenzo Tañada and environmental crusader Antonio Oposa Jr. To my mind, blogger Recabar’s characterization essentially highlights the distinction between true public intellectuals and what he calls “merely intellectuals.” But to

indict Filipino intellectuals in general, as if his characterization applied to all, would be too sweeping as there are and there have always been true public intellectuals in our midst.

One only needs to walk through our history to recognize the important contributions of acknowledged public intellectuals, from the first great Filipino public intellectual (FPI), Dr. Jose Rizal, on through Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Tañada, Jose Diokno, Renato Constantino, and many others. Helena Benitez, still very much around at 100, bridged the transition to a wider-ranging advocacy agenda for present-day FPIs, in departure from the almost exclusive nationalist focus of her peers and predecessors. Beyond politics, public intellectuals of today also espouse views on the economy, business, environment, culture and arts, health, gender, science and technology, and disaster management, among other concerns. Furthermore, today’s FPIs reach the public audience through a considerably wider range of modes and media, especially with the rise of the Internet and social media. Apart from being seen in print, today’s FPIs reach their publics via radio and TV, online blogs and journals, and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

One might expect, then, that today’s public intellectuals should have much greater influence than before on political, economic, environmental and social outcomes in the country. Yet by most indications, they don’t. But what Anderson saw to be the decline of the traditional public intellectual is neither due to declining numbers nor declining prominence of public intellectuals. Rather, I see it as the result of the distinct and seemingly widened divide between the country’s intellectual elite on the one hand and the thinly separated political and economic elite—who together wield actual power in Philippine society—on the other. Time was when the country’s political elite drew from the intellectual elite; in the bygone era, senators were highly regarded statesmen exemplified by Tañada, Diokno,

Benitez and Jovito Salonga. Our present political elite, however, draw mainly from the economic elite, and vice versa. They derive and perpetuate power either from business, whether legitimate or otherwise, or from what I’d call populist (and lucrative) occupations such as show business and sports. Under Philippine realpolitik, the public intellectuals’ influence on our national political, social and economic outcomes has been overpowered by transactional politics, reinforced by the electorate’s choices that are driven by prevalent poverty and wide income gaps.

Should we fault our public intellectuals for that? Perhaps, or perhaps not. I did not mean to resolve the debate here. But what’s sure is that we could use more public intellectuals of Emerson’s definition.

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E-mail: cielito.habito@gmail.com