>
>Justin Schwartz:
> > Oh, puleeze. Intellectuals read, write, and interpret difficult abstract
> > concepts in disciplines requiring special training and long study. ...
>
>I do that for a living, and I'm not an intellectual; I'm
>a computer programmer. If you think Adorno or Rawls are
>difficult you ought to try reading some of the programs I've
>had to deal with, in the common case palimpsests concocted
>under fire by a long series of (other) cranks.
As I said, not all mental workers are intellectuals, and many professors and scholars are not. Nor was I suggesting that computer programmers, brain surgeons, high powered accountants, serious lawyers, etc., do work that is less intellectually demanding than intellectuals do But intellectuals do do something that not every person can do, and not even every person who is demanding work in her technical area. An intellectual might be defined, practically, as someone who wouldn't think that reference to Rawls or Adorno wasn't obviously stupid, pretentious, or out of left field.
--jks
>
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