> Dennis Claxton wrote:
> > I was responding to the assumption that there are zero intellectuals
> > among Baptists. I saw that Astra Taylor movie Examined Life earlier
> > this year and it was kind of a jolt when Baptist Cornel West talked
> > about his Christianity, but there it is.
> >
> > So is Gingrich an intellectual? He is an idea man isn't he? Stupid
> > and abhorrent ideas but ideas none the less.
>
> I agree.
>
> Some of the posts on this question are trying to make "intellectual" a
> 'value' term - which is absurd. An intellectual is merely, as you say,
> someone who works with ideas, and the quality or the perspective of
> those ideas is irrelevant. Therre are probably in execess of a million
> or more intellectuals in the U.S.
>
> Lord help me, working with ideas does NOT make you an intellectual, working
with ideas coherently and carefully makes you an intellectual... searching
around for some part of some crappy ideas or partial/BS metaphorical
comparisons to support what you believe based on your basic incoherent
intolerance does NOT make you an intellectual... keerist, its important to
have some standards!
Significantly more than half the professional sociologists I know couldn't coherently think their way out of a theoretical box without getting 95% of the crap they think "theory" is or that people they consider "theorists" have said wrong. Credentialization and careerism supercede intellectualism way more often than the other way around... let's keep the terms distinct, or they all become meaningless.
Look how staggeringly wrong textbooks and professors get Marx and Weber and even Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society! How surprising is it that they then can't even begin to get the Gramsci, Frankfurt School, Foucault, feminism and post-structuralism.