The Intellectual

By Steve Fuller

Book Overview

Chomsky, Dawkins, Germaine Greer, Christopher Hitckens with their regular TV appearances, newspaper columns and soudbites in times of crisis, intellectuals are essential characters in the drama of modern life. But what makes them tick? This book dissects what it means to be an intellectual. What distinguishes them from philosophers, scientists, politicians or entrepreneurs? Why are they happy to be insulted as long as they are not ignored? Why do they thrive on conflict? And why is Batman the intellectual's favourite superhero? As well as a history of the intellectual from Ancient Greece to post-9/11, the author also provides an essential guide to the species. Think you would recognise an intellectual when you saw one? Entertain hopes of intellectualism yourself? Meet exemplars from the past - Voltaire, Sartre, Norman Mailer or Bertrand Russell - alongside many living examples in this road-map to the intellectual life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1840466537
• ISBN13: 9781840466539
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Primer for Troublemakers

The book is supposed to be modelled on Machiavelli's The Prince, and it does share some of its aphoristic style. However, what's most like the original is the bluntness with which Fuller deals with the intellectual pretensions of academics. He seems to think that most of the intellectual action in today's world has migrated off campus, as academics have remained mired in their powergames. But he clearly wants intellectuals to have spent some time in the Ivory Tower to get the needed forms of mental agility. The dialogue in the mid-section of the book is aimed mostly at philosophers but the last third of the book is a set of very useful FAQs.