Michel Foucault
pp. 186-198
in: Jenny Teichmann, Graham White (eds), An introduction to modern European philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1998Abstract
The role of an intellectual is not to tell others what they have to do. By what right would he do so? … The work of an intellectual is not to shape others’ political will; it is, through the analyses that he carries out in his own field, to question over and over again what is postulated as self-evident, to disturb people’s mental habits, the way they do and think things, to dissipate what is familiar and accepted, to re-examine rules and institutions…
