This work presents some of the primary intellectual figures in society from Antiquity onward, before studying how intellectuals became a subject of social, political, and scientific interrogation. It tackles the question of the analysis of intellectual production: how can sociology take stock of its content? The author examines the issue of civic and political involvement among intellectuals.
Louis Pinto is a sociologist and Director of Research Emeritus émérite at the National Center for Scientific Research. He has focused on the sociology of intellectuals, especially philosophers (La Vocation et le métier de philosophe, Calling and the Philosophical Profession, Seuil, 2007; Sociologie et philosophie: libres échanges, Sociology and Philosophy: Free Exchanges, Ithaque, 2014) and the history of the social sciences (Le Collectif et l’Individuel. Considérations durkheimiennes, The Collective and the Individual: Durkheimian Considerations, Raisons d’agir éditions, 2009), and the institutionalization of the idea of the consumer (L’Invention du consommateur, The Invention of the Consumer, PUF, 2018).