The trap of intellectual success: Robert N. Bellah, the American civil religion debate, and the sociology of knowledge

Abstract

Current sociology of knowledge tends to take for granted Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage: successful ideas bring recognition to their authors, successful authors have their ideas recognized more easily than unknown ones. This article argues that this theory should be revised via the introduction of the differential between the status of an idea and that of its creator: when an idea is more important than its creator, the latter becomes identified with the former, and this will hinder recognition of the intellectual's new ideas as they differ from old ones in their content or style. Robert N. Bellah's performance during the "civil religion debate" of the 1970s is reconstructed as an example of how this mechanism may work. Implications for further research are considered in the concluding section.A care for truth signifies a care for the truth-seeker. Robert K. MertonSuccess in the intellectual field has been extensively studied by the sociology of knowledge. Whereas traditionally intellectual achievement has been explained by intrinsic qualitative factors-that is, cultural objects are recognized because they are true, beautiful, or sophisticated; intellectuals become famous because they are learned, clever, or creative-sociologists have shown that a broad set of strategies

The sociology of intellectuals in the 20th and 21st century

“…But it is through mythological narrativisations of the canon, aesthetic‐material expressions of reverence that iconicity (Bartmanski, ; Inglis, ) is constructed and represented, and it is through the hearsay and gossip that it radiates through fields and networks. That intellectuals are often transformed into shared points of reference and symbols existing relatively independently of social structures in the sphere of symbolic reality is clear, for example, in Bortolini's work on Bellah (2012) where the author argues that “eminent intellectuals may find it difficult to have their ideas recognized precisely because they are famous” (Bortolini, , p. 188) and discussed the fictional “avatar” (Bortolini, , p. 202) which eclipses the real author. Nonetheless, there remains a considerable lacuna in the literature when it comes, for example, to the aesthetic and generally nontextual representations of intellectuals in the public sphere.…”

“…In their studies, scholars tend to privilege actors who achieved the pinnacle of success or even became true global celebrities. In the recent decades, the focus of sociological studies of intellectuals had usually been on individuals such as Sartre (Baert, ), Fromm (McLaughlin, ), Bellah and Geertz (Bortolini, ; Bortolini & Cossu, ), Foucault and Małinowski (Bartmanski, ), or Rorty (Gross, ). In other words, the face of the field is changing from the sociology of intellectuals to a sociology of famous intellectuals.…”

The “Bellah Affair” at Princeton

“…During the very days in which the Princeton affair was exploding, Bellah participated to a conference at Drew University from which an important book was drawn. American Civil Religion, published in 1974, established Bellah's status as an authority in American studies along with respected figures as Will Herberg, Sidney E. Mead, and W. Lloyd Warner (Richey and Jones 1974;Mathisen 1989;Bortolini 2011). Bellah's rising standing had its consequences from an academic point of view as well.…”

Civil Religion as Myth, Not History

“…For this critique, see (Kelley 1997) and (Echols 1992). On the decline of mainline Protestantism, see (Hollinger 2013 (Richey and Jones 1974), (Haberski 2018), and (Bortolini 2012). 13 See (Bellah[1975.…”