[Auf dem Foto: der deutsche Intellektuelle Walter Benjamin]
Dank dem US-amerikanischen Journalisten und Literaturkritiker William Deresiewicz weiß ich endlich, was genau einen Akademiker von einem Intellektuellen unterscheidet:
An intellectual is not an expert, and a public intellectual is not an expert who condescends to speak to a wider audience about her area of expertise. An intellectual is a generalist, an autodidact, a thinker who wanders and speculates. As Jack Miles puts it in a stellar essay on the question, ‘It takes years of disciplined preparation to become an academic. It takes years of undisciplined preparation to become an intellectual.’
[Via Perlentaucher; Zitat: William Deresiewicz: Start a Blog Print What does it mean to be a public intellectual?; Bild: Wiki Commons]
