Archive for the ‘ academia ’ Category
The great mistake of the historian of ideas or the intellectual historian is not to be at the same time an historian of words. What a combination that would be! Given: these things are often at odds. Ask an historian what is meant by history in this sentence or that; this should be enough to [ READ MORE ]
Two unexpected ways to place intellectual work. 1. Trace intellectual identities to one text or even a passage in a text that formed them, even perhaps without their express knowledge. This is Rober Bresson’s idea, when, in Diary of a Country Priest, he has the old wise priest tell the young martyr priest that all [ READ MORE ]
On intellectual styles: observations on the interface between personality and thought. We would have to imagine a slope in which the influence the personality exercises over thinking increases in proportion to the strength of several factors. The first would be age: in youth, personality plays an inordinate role in intellectual matters. This is largely because [ READ MORE ]
The structure of address of an intellectual (I won’t say academic) essay: not to whom it may concern, but what element in the addressee (in potentia any) it concerns and what element of the stuff (in potentia any) is made visible to awaken that element in the reader. There are many more ways to fail [ READ MORE ]
