Would you call this man an intellectual?

[aneeshm]

I'm linking to an article.

I'd like your comments on whether or not you think the author can be called an intellectual.

Link

[Shrapnel12]

I can't read the whole thing because I have to go to my son's soccer game, but what an interesting article. Even though it is written in English, it is like a foreign language. Not because it's not written correctly, but because his P.O.V is totally alien to me. I know nothing about Indian culture and the only thing I know about Hinduism is its name and I've been told they hold cows as a sacred animal. With his talk about this and that goddess and standing on a lotus, I'm just baffled, but I was interested in reading the ideas of someone so culturally different from me. Sorry, but I can't judge whether he is an intellectual or not, but what he had to say was interesting even if I didn't comprehend it all.

[Dracon II]

My old flatmate was a member of Dr Ambedkar's organization.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Re: Would you call this man an intellectual?

Originally posted by aneeshm
I'm linking to an article.

I'd like your comments on whether or not you think the author can be called an intellectual.

Link

Absurd, meaningless question.

It's not an intellectual article, but that says nothing about the author. Presented with a typical NY Times op-ed piece by Stanley Fish, or a movie review by Umberto Eco, I wouldn't come to the conclusion that either of them is an intellectual, either. Faced with Fish's Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities or Eco's The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts -- both key texts from my graduate education -- I'd come to a very different conclusion.

[aneeshm]

Re: Re: Would you call this man an intellectual?

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Absurd, meaningless question.

It's not an intellectual article, but that says nothing about the author. Presented with a typical NY Times op-ed piece by Stanley Fish, or a movie review by Umberto Eco, I wouldn't come to the conclusion that either of them is an intellectual, either. Faced with Fish's Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities or Eco's The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts -- both key texts from my graduate education -- I'd come to a very different conclusion.

If this is one of his more coherent pieces, and if he writes only like this, and only on topics like this, then would you call him an intellectual?

[Kidlicious]

Re: Would you call this man an intellectual?

Originally posted by aneeshm
I'm linking to an article.

I'd like your comments on whether or not you think the author can be called an intellectual.

Link

I think that's a strange question to ask.

[Shrapnel12]

What exactly is the topic? Whether the buffalo should be the state animal over the cow in India? How do you judge if he has an intellectual arguement or not? Wouldn't you have to be specifically Hindu to judge that? Other then Hindus, who else would care (is that my mistake, are there more Hindus on this forum then I know)?

[Provost Harrison]

Erm, summary?

[St Leo]

Re: Re: Re: Would you call this man an intellectual?

Originally posted by aneeshm
If this is one of his more coherent pieces, and if he writes only like this, and only on topics like this, then would you call him an intellectual?

No. Such specialization is the mark of a geek, not of an intellectual.