What is an intellectual life?

Good question. Is it the life of one posessing all the mental facilities without using them to their full extent? Or is it the life of a more primitive being that has focused all of it's energy into evolving, perhaps one day accuire the gift/curse of thought?

I am inclined to say that most humans don't lead intellectual lives, while most animals do. It is very strange. It seems all efforts of the western world revolves around suppressing intellect.

cyracuz

"I am inclined to say that most humans don't lead intellectual lives, while most animals do. It is very strange. It seems all efforts of the western world revolves around suppressing intellect."

I think you are correct. I never thought about it that way, non human animals use their brain power to its maximum while humans use it to 5%of capacity.

In the US we have a very great amount of anti-intellectualism. Is this true in other Western nations? Is this because of capitalism? Is this true because of religion?

What is an intellectual life?

It's more fun to define it by what it is not, such as ditch digging or brick laying.

Hard to say here in Canada. I mean, sure in the media, you might see it, and some people just don't like thinking too much, but I think there are also plenty of people that like knowledge, or deep stuff as well.

I would say the later...

I would say the latter, but that's where Americans and French differ.

In matters like the one you refer to, we are not that different, Gus. Sorry for the typo...

Coberst,

It is a fact of history that saturated and unchallenged people are easier to rule than hungry and opinionated ones. The romans knew, and a term has survived right up to our age. "Bread and circus".

It is very disturbing that a term such as this, a term practically taken from the dictator's manual, should be so easily applickable to our western democracies.

The entire consumer trend we're entangled in has one goal, keep us happy, amused, fat and busy. It is not good that we're working to diminish our horizon rather than increase it. It is the exact oposite of an intellectual existence. We're at the mercy of our senses reeling.

I think that those of us who understand what is going on can make a difference by trying to convince everyone to learn how to become a Critical Thinker.



CT (Critical Thinking)

"The noblest exercise of the mind within doors, and most befitting a person of quality, is study."
William Ramsey, Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, 1904

"Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."
Carl Sagan, Celebrated Scientist


I once asked a philosophy professor "What is philosophy about?" He said philosophy is "radically critical self-consciousness". This was 35 years ago. Only in the last five years have I begun to understand that statement

I took a number of courses in philosophy three decades ago but it was not until I began to study and understand Critical Thinking that I began to understand what "radically critical self-consciousness" meant.

I consider CT to be ?'philosophy light'. CT differs from other subject matter such as mathematics and geography in that it requires, for success, that the student develop a significant change in attitude.

Anyone who has been in military service recognizes the significant attitude adjustment introduced into all recruits in the eight weeks of boot camp. During the first eight weeks of military service each recruit is introduced to the proper military attitude. During the eight weeks of basic training there is certain knowledge and skills that the recruit learns but primarily s/he undergoes a significant attitude adjustment.

I would identify the CT attitude adjustment to be a movement from naïve common sense realism to critical self-consciousness. It is necessary to free many words and concepts from the limited meaning attached by normal usage?-such a separation requires that the learner hold in abeyance the normal sort of concept associations.

The individual who has made the attitude adjustment recognizes that reality is multilayered and that one can only penetrate those layers through a critical attitude toward both the self and the world. To be critical does not mean to be negative, as is a common misunderstanding.

If we were to follow the cat and the turtle as they make their way through the forest we would observe two fundamentally different ways that a creature might make its way through life.

The turtle withdraws into its shell when it bumps into something new, and remains such until that something new disappears or remains long enough to become familiar to the turtle. The cat is conscious of almost everything within the range of its senses, and studies all it perceives until its curiosity is satisfied.

Formal education teaches by telling so that the graduate is prepared with a sufficient database to get a job. Such an education efficiently prepares one to make a living, but this efficiency is at the cost of curiosity and imagination. Such an education does not prepare an individual to become critically self-conscious.

If we wish to emulate the cat rather than the turtle we must revitalize our curiosity and imagination after formal education. That revitalized curiosity and imagination, together with self directed study prepares each of us for a fulfilling life that includes the ecstasy of understanding.

I think that radically critical self-consciousness combines the attitude adjustment of CT and combines it with the curiosity of the cat and then takes that combination to a radical level.

A good place to begin CT is: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm