>In a modern secular society, cultural critics are heirs to the role of
>moral explicator that priests held in traditional religious societies.
I think there are some substantial differences, mainly centred around 'morality'. Many of these particular explicatory roles have in fact passed to those who continue to 'moralise' -- the 'media', politicians, religious leaders of various kinds, and others. I don't intend to take on any moralising mantle myself.
Nevertheless I have heard relationed arguments before (Said for example) and there certainly is a sense in which academics inherit a range of 'priestly' functions and positions. But what this means is that academics *can* take on these moralising roles, not that they have to, nor do I understand why you think literary critics are particularly invested with this role. To make the conversation easier, can we drop literary critics and stick to 'cultural critics' as I can understand your point better here.
>If chemists or physicists or anyone else with "intellectual authority"
>wants to chime in with moral lessons of their own, fine -- but I don't
>think the *primary* duty of scientists et al. is to provide moral
>instruction.
Neither is the *primary duty* of cultural critics moral instruction. And this is certainly not true of literary critics. One of the difficulties here is pinning down the common terrain and practice of the people you are referring to. In a sense I am clearly a cultural critic (I'm an Australian academic in case that wasn't obvious), as are the columnists in newspapers and the hosts of tabloid television shows and I think senior journalists in general who are allowed the opportunity for 'opinion'. So, before these cold and flu drugs lead me off on a weirder tangent, is a cultural critic someone with an institutional opportunity to voice an opinion on their 'culture' in general? And, does it have to be *in general* -- is a person who writes a column on the best movies for the week a cultural critic?
>Not everyone can understand particle physics, and there is
>no social necessity that everyone be able to achieve such understanding.
>However, society is badly crippled if there aren't intellectuals whose
>primary task is to examine moral issues in a way that people in general
>can grasp ; that job logically belongs to cultural critics.
I can see we're also going to have a problem with 'moral'.
Let me say that I do think I have a responsibility to address ethics and politics in my teaching, research and in my writing, but not because it is the 'primary duty' of the job I have. Your question 'who else is going to do it' might be quite a fair one, but I do not want to support that degree of defeatism.
Catherine