The via contemplativa and the via activa

The Nobel Peace Prize honours the highest achievements in creativity and courage: it shows ‘modern fame at its most dignified’ (Feldman 2001: x). It bestows recognition and authority and confers upon the laureates some kind of nobility: ‘The Nobels are really knighthoods of a new and unusual kind, perhaps the only true aristocracy in our democratic levelling age’ (Feldman 2001: 1). This book's aim in embodying the four types of creative and courageous public intellectual in the twelve ‘Nobels’ has not been to offer us idols to worship but to illustrate the different ways in which intellectuals can contribute to societal well-being and democracy. Its goal has been to sketch a perspective from which can be derived a more general typology of intellectuals' public involvement, which, I hope, can advance our understanding of intellectuals' public practice.

To develop a theoretical framework for an understanding of intellectuals' contributions towards the betterment of society and the enrichment of democracy, we started with the question of what gives intellectuals the authority to speak out to a general audience on broad issues. The comparison of the four types – dissidents, heroes, champions and pioneers – allows us to say that the public intellectual's special authority is constructed through his or her performance of the role with a sense of creativity and the effectiveness of his or her own voice in effecting social change within a set of historically specific cultural and social relations.