Muddasir Ramzan at Frontline:
Akeel Bilgrami, the Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, is a public intellectual and a distinctive voice in contemporary philosophy. His four books (Belief & Meaning; Self-Knowledge and Resentment; Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment; and Capital, Culture, and the Commons) and many published papers testify to his ability to forge within a single, coherent framework, analytic epistemology, moral psychology, and a critical and constructive political philosophy that is deeply informed by history and political economy. In this email interview, he reflects on issues that are deeply relevant not just to India but across the world.
Tell us a bit about yourself as an intellectual. How do you see yourself and how would you like to be defined?
I’m not sure I’d like to be defined. And I am wary of the label “intellectual”. What is true is that I don’t have any other talent. I love literature, especially poetry, I love music and listen to it each day with great pleasure, but I have no talent for literary writing or for producing music. Since whatever limited ability I have for intellectual and philosophical reflection is something I constantly exercise—I can’t seem to help doing so—there may be some grounds to call me an intellectual, but I am reluctant to assume any such label.
For two reasons. The first is that the label is used to talk of the “intellectual class”, which for the most part, in the places I’ve spent any time of my life, has been an elite class.
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