If we accept that there is such a thing as a public intellectual, then we have to presume that there also exist private intellectuals. Public intellectuals would always be in touch with social reality. In contrast with the private ones, their academic, scientific or artistic production would not remain behind closed doors, or in secret archives, or in publications that only their fellow intellectuals read.
I wish to salvage the original meaning of this public-private dichotomy. It belongs to the legal sciences and is found in the Digest or Pandects of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian the First. Book 1 clarifies that Public Law was produced by the people. It applied to all and was not revocable by contracts between private parties. Private law, in contrast, pertained only those parties involved in contractual agreements. “Public” in this original classification refers to the people rather than to the state, whereas in contemporary law and politics “public” has become synonymous with the state. For this reason I understand public intellectual work as belonging to everyone; to be for everyone. This should be the norm in a Democratic Republic but not so under a Tyranny or an Oligarchic Republic.
An intellectual production that doesn’t serve the people, then, is limited to a very small sphere of social life. This does not make it any less intellectual; it is simply less public.
In Cuba, public intellectuals need to break into popular spaces in order to share their works, so that they may replace bureaucrats’ empty jargon with the rich content of serious thought. Public intellectuals are nothing without the people, so it is not a question of aiming low to be comprehensible to ordinary people, but rather of speaking and thinking for the people, addressing the majority’s concerns , with all the flair, cultural sensitivity, as well as expert depth.
Our mission as jurists and especially as Law professors –which is what I am- is no more important than that of others’, but it should be accorded its due value because it is people’s juridical culture that allows for responsible, civic interventions within the Republic’s order.
In other words, a democracy needs people who are awake, and that does not just mean dancing and playing dominoes but staying alert in political life, without hesitating to deploy the Law, the Constitution, and justice.
A juridical education, to which I have humbly devoted the past twenty years of my life, is fundamental for producing jurists but yet more important for creating citizens. One of the features that distinguishes a people’s juridical culture is participation in the making of Law (Derecho, in Spanish) as well as in the escalating protection of rights (derechos, in Spanish) –and these are two different things. Without a public consciousness of Law as a rich resource for achieving our objectives as both individuals and the People, nobody will feel a duty to participate, propose, design, vote, control or revoke our laws.
Our role as both jurists and public intellectuals is to inject an old, ancient, rich ingredient into our popular culture – one that is seldom utilized, forgotten, just because it is uncomfortable and trenchant to power. The Law, in this logic, is as edifying, liberating and beautiful as dancing the danzón.
— Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada
Translation from the original Spanish by the editors.
Dr. Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada is a Professor of Law at the University of Havana’s Center for the Study of Public Administration (CEAP).