Browsing Quotes With Tag: intellectualism (6)
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“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
Speaker: Isaac AsimovPosted: 03 Nov 2011 at 3:56 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die.
Speaker: J.D. SalingerSource: Franny and ZooeyPosted: 22 Aug 2010 at 5:57 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
There is something undeniably attractive about becoming a born-again Christian. I hear atheists say that all the time, although they inevitably make that suggestion in the most insulting way possible: Nothing offends me more than those who claim they wish they could become blindly religious because it would “make everything so simple.” People who make that argument are trying to convince the world that they’re somehow doomed by their own intelligence, and that they’d love to be as stupid as all the thoughtless automatons they condescendingly despise.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 9:28 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
You do not take up philosophy the way you enter the seminary, with a credo as your sword and a single path as your destiny. Should you study Plato. Epicurus, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel or even Husserl? Esthetics, politics, morality, epistemology, metaphysics? Should you devote your time to teaching, to producing a body of work, to research, to Culture? It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of a sterile elite – for this turns the university into a sect.
Speaker: Muriel BarberySource: the Elegance of the HedgehogPosted: 27 Jun 2009 at 1:02 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
If you want to make a [university] career, take a marginal, exotic text (William Ockham’s 'Sum of Logic’) that is relatively unexplored, abuse its literal meaning by ascribing it to an intention that the author himself had not been aware of (because, as we all know, the unknown in conceptual matters is far more powerful than any conscious design), distort that meaning to the point where it resembles an original thesis (it is the concept of the absolute power of God that is at the basis of a logical analysis, the philosophical implications of which are ignored), burn all your icons while you’re at it (atheism, faith in Reason as opposed to the reason of faith, love of wisdom ad other bagatelles dear to the hearts of socialists), devote a year of your life to this unworthy little game at the expense of a collectivity whom you drag from their beds at seven in the morning, and send a courier to your research director.
Speaker: Muriel BarberySource: the Elegance of the HedgehogPosted: 27 Jun 2009 at 12:59 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable of devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to the rehashing of useless and absurd ideas. I spoke with a young doctoral candidate in Greek patristics and wondered how so much youth could be squandered in the service of nothingness. When you consider that a primate’s major preoccupations are sex, territory and hierarchy, spending one’s time reflecting on the meaning of prayer for Augustine of Hippo seems a relatively futile exercise.
To be sure, there are those who will argue that mankind aspires to meaning beyond mere impulses. But I would counter that while this is certainly true (otherwise, what am I to do with literature?), it is also utterly false: meaning is merely another impulse, an impulse carried to the highest degree of achievement, in that it uses the most effective means – understanding – to attain its goals. For the quest for meaning abd beauty is hardly a sign that man has an elevated nature, that by leaving behind his animal impulses he will go on to find the justification of his existence in the enlightenment of the spirit: no, it is a primed weapon in the service of a trivial and material goal. And when the weapon becomes its own subject, this is the simple consequence of the specific neuronal wiring that distinguishes us from other animals; by allowing us to survive, the efficiency of intelligence also offers us the possibility of complexity without foundation, thought without usefulness, and beauty without purpose. It’s like a computer bug, a consequence without consequence of the subtlety of our cortex, a superfluous perversion making an utterly wasteful use of the means at our disposal.Speaker: Muriel BarberySource: the Elegance of the HedgehogPosted: 25 Jun 2009 at 8:12 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment!