What is an intellectual? A simple question, but one which has been answered in very different and often complex ways. Intellectuals, according to Karl Mannheim's classic 1936 definition, embody the relative freedom of thought. But this broad definition has suffered increasing criticism, notably on account of its insistence that intellectual thought eludes class definition by means of the magical powers of its relative freedom. Historians have been amongst Mannheim's more severe critics, and have proffered instead more specific definitions, and suggested, for example, that the appearance of intellectuals is not to be explained by some function of thought, but rather by more concrete factors such as the growth of the literary market from 1840 on. The new title of ‘intellectual’, with all its supposed ‘independence’, had to be purchased in hard cash, so, like everything else, suffered from market fluctuations.

In the last decade, this notion of the intellectual's ‘freedom of thought’ has been debunked. It has become clear that the intellectual was neither a trans-national, nor trans-cultural, nor trans-historical phenomenon. In France, the term ‘intellectual’ (l'intellectuel) was said to have come into common currency in 1898 in conjunction with the campaign to exonerate Dreyfus. French intellectuals, therefore, like Dreyfusards, formed neither a narrow nor homogeneous group. French intellectuals, therefore, like Dreyfusards, formed neither a narrow nor homogeneous group. Instead their function was to guard the rights of the individual against the state, and to challenge generally the crude and anonymous operations of all large groups like religious denominations and political parties.