On Cultivating the Intellectual Life
How does the intellectual life help us “aspire to the splendor of humanity” and serve others?
A couple months ago, I spoke about writing and editing at my former high school for career day. Here’s what was running through my mind before I walked through the door: Nathan Heller’s New Yorker article called “The End of the English Major” (published one week before I was about to tell a classroom of high schoolers to study literature); a surge of inner struggles—perfectionism and the sense of the “impracticality” of the work we do; and a few basic tips—smile, be friendly, and don’t scare anyone away with the realities of a writing life. But I trudged on anyway because I love little learning communities (classrooms) that opportunities like this afford.
So at the end, I asked the students in the room why they wanted to be writers, and one said, “I want to write so I can help people.” It made me pause. I recalled Zena Hitz’s book Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, where she talks about how “the intellectual life cultivates our aspirations.” But not necessarily in terms of our career choices because human aspiration goes much deeper than our outer life: “We aspire to ways of being: to be wise, or kind; to be vast in understanding, steadfast in truth, humble in success, witty in adversity.” Listening to this group of writers, I found that they were all aspiring to something more than a career. They also wanted to think, learn, and serve.
So what is the intellectual life exactly? Hitz identifies these features:
1. It is a form of the inner life of a person, a place of retreat and reflection.
2. As such it is withdrawn from the world, where “the world” is understood in its (originally Platonic, later Christian) sense as the locus of competition and struggle for wealth, power, prestige, and status.
3. It is a source of dignity.
4. It opens space for communion: it allows for profound connection between human beings.
These features show us that the intellectual life isn’t just for the elite but rather is a part of our humanity. Even for those who do not consider themselves “readers,” it’s important to remember that words form us in how we understand ourselves and the world. Words and stories shape us all the time, which is why the intellectual life belongs to everyone, and it’s up to us to embrace it in our ordinary lives. Bombarded with information and entertainment, we can choose how we participate in cultural conversations. Have we stretched our imaginations, nurtured our creativity, and formed our hearts by what we read and how we think? This kind of intellectual work Hitz calls “a form of loving service.”
Here are a few questions Hitz asks in her introduction that I’ll leave for reflection:
“Is there a hidden work that we do, underneath or behind our visible work?”
“How does one become entranced by the rewards of one’s work to the point of neglecting its ultimate purpose?”
“What does it mean to pursue learning for its own sake? Is it even possible? Is the joy of learning itself selfish?”
Keep reading, thinking, and creating,
Jody
To Read:
1. This article from The Point shares an encouraging alternative to the discouraging account of the collapse of the humanities offered in the New Yorker.
Indeed, despite the dire reports of the state of the humanities, there is a humanistic revival in higher education underway—it’s just happening where few commentators think to look. Community colleges might very well be the best place for this revival.
2. Here’s an interesting piece from Humanum Review on starting a trade school from Marc Barnes.
The thing is best known by a contrast: we fear, and we do so quite a bit. Most people survive the misery of life by the careful activation of systems, from phones to cars to office workplaces and government outposts. Most people do not know these life-support systems from within, cannot take them up and consider them as the young Jesus considered the table, the chair, and the cross: with the knowledge of how it hangs together, of the intelligence that arranges the thing, of its weakness and strength and, most importantly, its contingency as an artifact, the fact that it might have been put together differently, or not at all. Rather, we wake, caffeinate ourselves, stumble out the door to make the money necessary for the whole business, get into the 2009 Honda Accord, and—nothing. A gurgle. A half-attempted turnover. No recourse, no mastery, no dominion, just the revelation of the servile self to itself.
3. Here is my article for Catholic Women in Business on what I learned from speaking at a high school career day.
I realized that this fundamental relationship between paid work and the work I am called to perform in my domestic life was somehow overlooked. The absence of this discussion caused a fear of being a working mother. The images of the working mother in my 18-year-old mind were created both from what I had seen but also from what I had not seen. What did a flourishing working mother look like?
4. I came across Zena Hitz through the Catherine Project, which “builds communities of learning based on conversation and hospitality”—a great way to embark on the intellectual life.
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I love that you started by asking them a question rather than simply talking AT the students. They are a treasure trove of information and inspiration when people take the time to ask.