"Intellectuals"

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I'm talking more about social role than "intellectualism" per se. Here is a definition of intellectuals from sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset in his book Political Man (1960):

"I have considered as intellectuals all those who create, distribute, and apply culture, that is, the symbolic world of man, including art, science and religion. Within this group there are two main levels: the hard core or creators of culture - scholars, artists, philosophers, authors, some editors, and some journalists; and the distributors - performers in the various arts, most teachers, most reporters. A peripheral group is composed of those who apply culture as part of their jobs - professionals like physicians and lawyers.

When Europeans speak of the intelligentsia, they mean all three categories. In America, however, where university educations are much more common, graduates do not constitute a distinct class or community, and it is usual only to include only the first two categories..."

And another definition from Alan Kahan in his book Mind vs. Money (which is interesting but problematic book):

"What is an intellectual? How do you recognize one? A short answer is that the modern intelligentsia is composed of academia plus bohemia, that is professors, writers, and artists...

Socially intellectuals can be distinguished by their occupations and their education. The occupations intellectuals practice have changed over time. In the nineteenth century, bohemia, that is independent writers and artists, novelists, journalists and poets, made up a much larger portion of the intellectual class than did academia. Until the late nineteenth century there were very few professors, even in Europe. In 1860, England, France and Germany could count fewer than 3500 university faculty among them, versus more than 10,000 writers and editors. By comparison, there were 1.6 million "post-secondary teachers" in the United States versus about 320,000 "writers and editors"...

...The other social marker for intellectuals, along with occupation, is education. One thing intellectuals have had in common throughout history is an advanced education. Bohemians may drop out of college, but one way or another they have learned what they need outside the classroom. Through their education, intellectuals have learned a certain mastery of certain cultural values, acquired a cultural capital. But intellectuals are not an economic class. Like medieval nobles, intellectuals derive their identity from their status not their money. Their education is a crucial party of how they get their status. Over the course of the twentieth century, this status has increasingly required proof in the form of a college degree, and increasingly an advanced degree (bohemians partly excepted). Proving one's educational pedigree has replaced proving one's noble ancestry.

What matters most, however, is not the degree, but the kind of education received. Before 1914, a high school diploma of the correct kind, including lots of study of Greek and Latin, was often all the formal education many intellectuals had. Today, the vast majority of people with college degrees are not intellectuals, because they do not have the right kind of education. The kind of education necessary to make an intellectual has always been centered around the liberal arts..." (pp. 6-7)

An intellectual is merely someone who has found something more interesting than sex. He is like a person in a library who, upon discovering that an attractive person is seated nearby, looks first at what book that other person is reading, rather than what that other person is wearing.

In essence, an intellectual is one who primarily uses his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate, or ask and answer questions about a wide variety of different ideas. Being a genius does not make one an intellectual, nor does an advanced education. Using the reasoning capabilities of one's mind (however great or small they may be) in preference to feelings and emotions is what makes one an intellectual.

To do otherwise is to earn the pejorative label of "Emo".

To get an advanced education (engineering, math, economics or something challenging--not something useless like social studies), one has to be an intellectual.

Intellectualism and feelings are not mutually exclusive. I feel that I master something when I get good grades, which further fuels my desire to use my abilities. I also feel that what I do when it comes to reflect over physics or program stuff is "fun".



Emo bashing is so 2008. Now that they're driven back to the shadows, we're going to bring down the hipsters.

I agree, even philosophy, psychology and literature (at high levels) requires a degree of intellectual ability.

I tend to quantify the difficulty of a given direction within academia based on how students from other fields would be able to tackle the material. For instance, could your average engineering student get a degree in social studies? Yes. Could your average student of social studies get a degree in engineering? Well, you know why a social studies major can never be integrated, because they don't have a function.



I think you're working off two different definitions, I think a more accurate wording would be "reason" vs "emotions".

Last edited by TM on 19 Oct 2012, 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, one need only pay the tuition and study to the test. While earning my own MSEE, I found this to be true more often than not. Many people skated through the finals without actually committing what they'd learned to their philosophical foundations. For example, the last three people I interviewed for a position as my assistant could not recite Ohm's Law or tell me the difference between Signal Tracing and Half-Splitting.


True. An intellectual uses reason to guide his actions and his emotions, and does his best to keep his emotions from clouding his reason and judgment.


Those three people I interviewed all got "Good Grades" -- the graduated BSEE after all. They all felt confident in their qualifications, but simply could not muster the intellectual requirements for the position.


Feelings are nice, but they do not solve problems.

Since when does the "practicality" of the degree have anything to do with intellectualism?

Last edited by Berlin on 19 Oct 2012, 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Economics is a branch of the social studies, and a lot of people with advanced degrees aren't very intellectual at all.

Most people with advanced degrees are holders of professionally-oriented degrees, like MBAs, JDs, MDs, master's degrees in education, etc. Surely there are plenty of highly intelligent people with these degrees and several who would qualify as intellectuals but most would not.

And of course there are plenty of genuine intellectuals who lack college degrees, though this group is quite skewed toward the elderly, people who came of age before the mass university expansion of the 1960s.

Last edited by Berlin on 19 Oct 2012, 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Depends on the subject. I found this to be true in one subject last christmas (allthough this was only true because I was already familiar with logic gates and boolean algebra). I've never met any unintelligent person with a degree in something useful.

If you're unfamiliar with even the simplest calculus math or even basic programming (eg. if-statements, loops, arrays, algorithms and datastructures), you won't be able to read up on the subject a few weeks before an exam and get a decent grade. Many people try, though.



They were probably familar with more detailed fields of electrical engineering (if that was their degree). People tend to forget the very basic mathematical formulas (Ohm's law, Kirchoff's laws etc.) after half a year because they're just formulas and approximations. It would probably still be very easy for them to regain their knowledge in the initial subjects.

Some people just memorize the formulas to get a C, but to do this, one needs a good memory and a decent attention span.



I never said they did. Einstein wouldn't do intensive research on physics if the field didn't interest him, though.

Just my two cents and personal opinion - -
Any intellectual is fascinated - even obsessed - with learning and knowledge beyond that of most of the populace. Formal schooling almost certainly is part of that, as that is where such learning is found. By job definition, intellectuals fill up those positions such as in journalism, science, the arts, etc. as they are the only ones qualified. Or they can drop out and live the counter culture life, as intellectuals have always been counted among bohemians. Regardless, those who see ignorance as a virtue, and who think learning too much can be a bad thing, see either as a threat to their peculiar, but popular values.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I've certainly met idiotic people who majored in subjects like elementary education or marketing. These are quite "practical" subjects in that they are very much oriented towards specific jobs.

But you seem to be viewing "intellectuals" and "intelligence" as synonymous, and "something useful" as basically meaning science and engineering degrees.

I was refering to the bachelor's degree of social studies. Just because economy is a branch in social science doesn't mean that a degree in social studies have anything to do with economy.

To actually make use of your degree (i.e. not just copying something you've read from a book down to a piece of paper), you need to be an intellectual.

Something useful is studies not aimed at hippies and pseudo-intellectuals. A master's degree in english or history with good grades is not useless. An associate's degree in political science is.

Intellectual means to be able to put what you've learned to use (i.e. "understanding it" and not just "knowing it" or "remembering it"). You can't program anything (apart from copy-paste programming) or teach students how to understand math without being an intellectual.

Please elaborate on why a degree in English or History is better than a degree in political science...

I'm not saying that a MD in political science is useless, but unless it's combined with something else (eg. a degree in teaching), an assosciate's or bachelor's degree is. That's how it works in Europe, at least.

Please elaborate what a lower-level degree in any of the subjects can be used for.