Anti-intellectualism

From RationalWiki
Revision as of 04:24, 6 February 2012 by Meer (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge"
—Issac Asimov[1]

Anti-intellectualism is an attitude that minimizes the value of using intelligence and knowledge to address life's issues. Those who subscribe to this "philosophy" believe that no amount of science and "book knowledge" will ever live up to "street smarts" and "common sense". This attitude exists in some young Earth creationists who feel that the Bible is proof enough for their beliefs and empirical evidence simply does not matter.

Synthesizing the work of Richard Hofstadter and Dabiel J. Rigney, Diane S. Claussen describes three types of anti-intellectualism:[2]

  • Religious anti-intellectualism, in which emotion is taken to be warm, good and humane, while reason is taken to be cold, bad and robotic.
  • Populist anti-intellectualism, in which skepticism is expressed about politicians with inherited wealth and elite educations.
  • Unreflective instrumentalism, in which the value of learning is reduced to immediate material gain in the form of higher profits and higher salaries. In higher education this results in "suppression of ethics discussions, pressure for vocationalism in the humanities and social sciences, and advocacy of less autonomy in education."

See also

Footnotes

  1. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/84250
  2. Diane S. Claussen. "A Brief History of Anti-intellectualism in American Media." Academe. May-June 2011. Pp. 8-13.
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Toolbox
support