This work aims to present five classic proposals that analyze the role and social place of the intellectual, in order to explore its relevance in the historical approach of this subject. The proposals presented here are divided into two groups: In the first group I place the proposals that have a biased sense (Mannheim, Sartre and Bobbio), which are characterized because they start from what should be the intellectual, and give him a status of ethical, moral or cientificista superiority. The second group consists on the proposals that rescue a broader perspective analysis (Gramsci and Bourdieu), and allow a more objective study, in which the intellectual is analyzed as a component within a broader context that determines it.