Intellectuals and Scholars
Intellectuals and Scholars
Bertrand Russell defined an intellectual as “a person who pretends to have more intellect than he has”.
Orestes Brownson defined a scholar as “as serious, robust, full grown man who feels that life is a serious affair and that he has a serious part to act in its eventful drama; and must therefore do his best to act well his part, so as to leave behind him, in the good he has done, a grateful remembrance of having been.”
Who would want to be an intellectual as opposed to a scholar using these definitions? A scholar is a reflective person and I long for the day when our university faculties will again be dominated by scholars and not by intellectuals.
I long for the day when scholars will be attracted to public service, where their reflections will translate into public policy.
I long for a judiciary dominated by scholars who would reflect upon the application of our laws from a perspective of scholarship rather than intellect.
When one discusses serious social thought in recent decades, one rarely turns to those who hold high political office.
Lionel Trilling describes the scholar politician I hope to see emerge from the current wasteland of Canadian and Western politics as: “One who does not have contempt, but love for the people—love which commands him to live and labour, and if need be to suffer for their redemption, but he never forgets that he is their instructor, their guide, their chief, not their echo, their slave, their tool."
This seems to me to be an eminently wise model to hold up; the reflective, loving scholar who commands respect and who is wise enough to be a ruler. With such men and women as leaders in our academies, our corporations, our political organizations, our governments, our church organizations, our families, our courts we might begin to reverse the slide brought on by our society’s il-considered embracement of humanitarianism.
This doyen of all “isms” has expunged individual responsibility from social theory and replaced it with sympathy and victim hood.
Let us raise up more scholars!
Bertrand Russell defined an intellectual as “a person who pretends to have more intellect than he has”.
Orestes Brownson defined a scholar as “as serious, robust, full grown man who feels that life is a serious affair and that he has a serious part to act in its eventful drama; and must therefore do his best to act well his part, so as to leave behind him, in the good he has done, a grateful remembrance of having been.”
Who would want to be an intellectual as opposed to a scholar using these definitions? A scholar is a reflective person and I long for the day when our university faculties will again be dominated by scholars and not by intellectuals.
I long for the day when scholars will be attracted to public service, where their reflections will translate into public policy.
I long for a judiciary dominated by scholars who would reflect upon the application of our laws from a perspective of scholarship rather than intellect.
When one discusses serious social thought in recent decades, one rarely turns to those who hold high political office.
Lionel Trilling describes the scholar politician I hope to see emerge from the current wasteland of Canadian and Western politics as: “One who does not have contempt, but love for the people—love which commands him to live and labour, and if need be to suffer for their redemption, but he never forgets that he is their instructor, their guide, their chief, not their echo, their slave, their tool."
This seems to me to be an eminently wise model to hold up; the reflective, loving scholar who commands respect and who is wise enough to be a ruler. With such men and women as leaders in our academies, our corporations, our political organizations, our governments, our church organizations, our families, our courts we might begin to reverse the slide brought on by our society’s il-considered embracement of humanitarianism.
This doyen of all “isms” has expunged individual responsibility from social theory and replaced it with sympathy and victim hood.
Let us raise up more scholars!
posted by Ben Buan | 10:14 a.m.
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