Those Who Feel Eternity: Truth and the Intellectual

I’m continuing the summer series of reflections on the transcendentals as they are brought forth and nourished by artists, intellectuals, and professed religious. This month, the focus is on the Intellectual – a vocation that, because it is dependent on silence and study, pairs so well with religious life. So many of our inspiring intellectuals blossomed in the priesthood and religious life: Augustine of Hippo, the Venerable Bede, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Edith Stein, John Chrysostom, John Paul II.

But what is an intellectual? It can be difficult to pare down words like “artist” and “intellectual” – cutting away all the fluff to find something solid that we can build on. They’ve been thrown around casually for far too long. The idea that everyone is (or should be) an intellectual not only diminishes the call to the intellectual life, it also diminishes the value of other callings. Many of us are not called to the intellectual life, we are all called to become saints in our own, individual ways.

An intellectual is one whose call is to pursue truth. He has both the capacity for and the commitment to explore and develop complex ideas. He then, ideally, makes use of his capacity to build a life around the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Intellectuals pursue truth – as artists pursue beauty – with varying levels of success, but that commitment – the discipline to work consistently toward knowledge is an essential part of the intellectual life. Without it, the person with intellectual talent is just a smart person living out a different calling.

The Fool, the Intellectual, and the Life Between

Think of St. Francis, one of the world’s favorite saints. Reading about his life, it’s obvious Francis was intelligent and creative. But he was called to be a “Holy Fool” – to embrace humility and foolishness in the world’s eyes in order to draw closer to Christ. Francis’s intelligence and creativity existed to be subjected to his calling. They helped him transform into the “Fool for Christ” who – in his humility – radically transformed the Church.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the saint of the Intellectual life, pursued truth wholeheartedly. His life and works give Catholic intellectuals a path to follow and support along the way. Like Francis, he was a multifaceted man – creative, devout, and intelligent. But Thomas wasn’t called to imitate Francis, nor was he called to devote himself primarily to writing his beautiful hymns. Thomas was called to nurture his intellect. In doing so, Thomas the intellectual also radically transformed the Church.

“Truth is ever new. Like the grass of morning, moist with glistening dew … we must help our God to renew … the eternal face of the earth.”^[1] In every generation, intellectuals are called to live out this vocation to Truth. “Thought is waiting for men, and men for thought.”^[2] But even more than the artistic life, the intellectual life is suffering severely in our contemporary world. It needs support to thrive – parents, spouses, and friends who are willing to sacrifice to nurture the intellectual life.

Intellectuals in the Digital Age

Intellectual life does not pair well with our modern, uber-connected society. In a world of easy answers and consistent distractions, the intellectual life is a fast-dying relic of a slower world.

“Do you want to have an intellectual life?” writes Fr. A.G. Sertillanges in his book The Intellectual Life. “Begin by creating within you a zone of silence.” But silence is rarer than hen’s teeth in our modern world. Especially internal silence. We spend our lives attached to devices that actively work to dispel the silence and distract the mind. Too often, we pick up our little distractions and “research.” We do a “deep dive” into whatever topic piques our interest and come away feeling well-informed – especially if our research confirms our own opinions.

The vices of the intellectual life, vain curiosity and negligence, are a part of daily life for those of us consistently connected to smartphones. Like any discipline, the pursuit of truth requires consistency and temperance; “a lover of pleasure is an enemy of his body and therefore quickly becomes an enemy of his soul.”^[3] But pleasure isn’t limited to physical things. Smartphones and social media are designed to give all the pleasures of addiction, as well as creating an environment that glorifies mediocrity, self-indulgence, and vain curiosity.

Distracting and Diminishing – A Culture of Evasion

These distractions don’t just tear the intellectual away from his calling – they also diminish his sense of the value of his work. Fr. Sertillanges emphasized the world’s trend to dismiss the intellectual in favor of something petty and easy to digest: “external success … is nowadays very rare in the case of a true intellectual. The public as a whole is vulgar and likes only what is vulgar.”

Those are harsh words for us, the public, to read. But if we look around at what we flock to – we can see that we are primarily attracted to books and articles that make us feel rather than challenging us to think. Fr. Sertillanges challenging book, The Intellectual Life, was followed in 2022 by a slim, insipid Call to the Intellectual Life by Rachel Bulman titled With All Her Mind. In this modern approach to intellectual life, we are given a picture of just how hungry the public is for words that placate instead of challenge and ideas that banalize rather than inspire.

The academic world is full of people who have chosen popularity over perfection. It is a life that is “not fulfilled by vague readings and a few scattered writings…the life of study is austere and imposes grave obligations…Truth serves only its slaves.” ^[4]

In a culture of egalitarianism, the wholehearted pursuit of knowledge is passé. But these slaves of Truth are an essential part of a healthy society. The intellectual devotes himself to study in order to know Truth in a deep and intimate way. When we attempt to remove that discipline and devotion from the intellectual life, we’re left with the “know it all,” a shallow veneer of knowledge, painted on for show. “I know that one of my greatest obstacles to enriching my mind is the lie that, in order to think, I must devote myself to hours of reading and some sort of academic work,”^[5] writes Rachel Bulman in her introduction. It’s a telling line – the overabundance of personal pronouns subjectivizes the entire statement, while the strawman “in order to think” dismisses the intellectual life altogether as mere “thinking” – something we all can, of course, do without education, discipline, or obligation.

But the intellectual life, the “life of the mind,” isn’t “just thinking,” “hours of reading,” or “some sort of academic work” any more than the religious life is “just praying,” or “hours at Mass,” or “some sort of charity work.” Dismissive language regarding any calling, whether artistic, intellectual, or religious exists to negate the specialness of that calling – lowering the bar so we can all be special without striving to nurture our own gifts.

Community and the Intellectual

Like the artist, the intellectual needs his community to see and value his call. The intellectual life requires discipline and solitude. It requires a committed time to study and an interior silence. The community of the intellectual can support him by defending his solitude and by greeting him again when he comes out of it.

Often, especially if he is balancing the demands of the intellectual life with marriage, family, and outside work, the intellectual has to fight for his time with Truth. It’s painful to know that the people you love aren’t willing to sacrifice for you – that they don’t value your calling.

When we engage with the intellectuals in our midst, it’s important not only to defend their silence and nurture their discipline, but also to clearly acknowledge the value of what they have to offer instead of diminishing it. Our intellectual loved ones are fighting to maintain their calling, let us be a community that fights alongside them.

^[1] Sertillanges, A.G. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. Trans. Mary Ryan. 1987.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Bulman, Rachel. With All Her Mind: A Call to the Intellectual Life. 2022.