Intellectuals vs.activism

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 6 06:08:23 PDT 2002



>>
>>You're absolutely right Justin. One of the reasons I left academia
>>suprised even me: the complete lack of intellectual curiosity. There is
>>more intellectual ferment among software engineers (where I now spend my
>>working hours), then I found among the self-satisfied intellectual
>>policemen at most of the campuses I taught.

I won't say the lawyers I've known show more intellectual curiorsity than most of the technocratic professors I used to know. But then they have no pretentions either. They have no aspiration to be more than good technicians. I do miss chatting about philosophy with my colleagues. And even the technos are good for technical discussions. A friend who is not a techno--my undergrad mentor called them "philosophoids"--called up the other day and we had a happy 20 minutes talking about Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" argument. It was fun getting paid for that sort of thing. Too bad one has to put up with the rest of the shit.


>
>i don't know. i didn't know that many self-satisfied intellectual
>policemen. ok, i knew a lot, but i didn't have to spend any time with any
>of them.
>

Jeff:

i spent time with weren't philosophers or religious
>studies geeks (like myself), but historians working in/on central and south
>america or in the american studies program. maybe that explains it . . .
>there certainly weren't that many marxist/activist medievalists or
>philosophers . . .

I know only two (one is actually an anarchist). I think you'll find more rads in area studies an american studies than in philosophy.

jks

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