The text focuses on the contemporary role of intellectuals and artists in social change, facing a “classical” debate rooted in different scientific approaches and cultural backgrounds. The starting point is the intellectual and artistic commitment in the transition from the Soviet-type regimes to democracy in Central-Eastern Europe, one of the most significant experience in this sense. The example allow to think over the intellectual/artist’s duty of criticism of political power, eluding collusion and deference, otherwise he risks of turning in a new Mandarin. Nowadays the mediasphere competes with the others, exercising an important legitimizing function and, in some cases, of consensus creation. Intellectuals and artists very often yield to the lure of media visibility, contributing to a superficial spectacularization of culture, misunderstood as democratization of knowledge. In the age of post-modernity and globalization, intellectuals and artists can rediscover the ethical concerns that characterized them in the past, responding to a renewed request of responsibility. They have to be still capable of transcending conformism and narcissism to formulate objective interpretations of contemporary societies and visions for the future, becoming promoters of social change as “fellow travellers”.
