Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse

Well, this is a book from Roger Kimball -- so of course it's worth reading. Beware, however: this particular volume is written on the level of graduate seminars; it is most definitely not a popular treatment for a mass audience. This book is a collection of book reviews: not one-paragraph notices, but long and thorough reviews of books. It begins with a review of Aron's classic "Opium of the Masses" but then proceeds to a sort of mini-history of philosophy, done through book reviews. In my humble opinion, he wastes a lot of costly ink on mountebanks such as Hegel and Marx, and somehow manages to downplay the greatest working philosopher of the 20th century, Santayana. In sum, great food for the hungry brain! :-) You get your Raymond Aron here, and your Plutarch, your Daumier, and your Bagehot. Then you get your Descartes, your Schiller, your Hegel, and your Schopenhauer. Free bonus: Strange Soren Kierkegaard! :-) After that, you get your Santayana, your Wittlessstein, your Lord Bertie, and your David Stove. (Who he??) In conclusion, you get your Trollope, your P.G. Wodehouse, your Tocqueville, and a few others. Frankly I would recommend reading Santayana's "The Life of Reason" as you read this book. I think mankind as a species has wasted enough time on Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Witlessstein, but if you follow my reading plan you can ignore witless me and hear what Roger Kimball and George Santayana have to say! :-)

I am ecstatic to inform you of the noble presence of Roger Kimball. This man, the Managing Editor of The New Criterion, had made his career a tenacious crusade to save our history and to publicize the great minds and ideas that have made our culture the greatest on this earth.Kimball is one of the few men who recognized the cultural calamity from its beginnings. His Tenured Radicals was one of the first publications to identify and showcase the current bizarre practices in our universities. It came out over a decade ago and, since that time, he has written numerous books that examine the major figures and trends within literature, art, philosophy, history, and political science. Unlike the rest of us, Kimball has the ability to specialize in the liberal arts on the whole.Even though it lacks the earth-shattering power of The Long March; Lives of the Mind is an exquisite endeavor.The book showcases 18 "minds" or intellectuals and its theme is that "intelligence, like fire, is a power that is neither good nor bad in itself but rather takes its virtue, its moral coloring from its application." Although, no chapter is assigned for him in the text, Karl Marx would be the perfect example of the misapplication of intelligence. Hegel and Wittgenstein, who both receive treatment in Lives of the Mind, would be two others.All of the 18 essays originally appeared in The New Criterion, and, as I have a subscription to the excellent journal, it was my second chance to read many of them. My favorites involved Plutarch, P.G. Wodehouse, and George Santayana. Yet, all of them have value as they inform us of lives and works of writers who are rarely discussed within the current Kultursmog.Many of his subjects like Descartes, Schopenhauer, Plutarch, and Tocqueville are familiar to most of our readers, but how much time do we have as adults to devote ourselves to their actual achievements? The answer is not much. One of his most enjoyable essays concerns G.C. Lichtenberg, and I can honestly state that I had never even heard his name before I read Kimball's chapter. Lives offers a brief tutorial for those of us who have forgotten about these men or never had a chance to learn about them in the first place.What makes Kimball so important? Well, first of all, Kimball stands up to phonies and charlatans with a combination of bravery and erudition that few others possess. There appears to be no living person that he is afraid to refute, and he could care less about popular opinion.This may sound odd but I think that his intelligence is best expressed in the way that he makes his paragraphs accessible to the reader. There's no need for him to hide behind amalgamations of post-modernist verbal diarrhea like other contemporary scholars. Kimball readily reveals his words and analysis to the reader.Yet, to leave it at intelligence and courage is to sell the writer short. I would be leaving out his wit, which has to be his most endearing characteristic. For a man who is earnest

Roger Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion, a neo-conservative journal of arts and letters. I gather that most of these essays were published as book reviews and essays in that publication. (Strangely, the book nowhere tells you where the essays come from.) I enjoyed this book a great deal. Kimball is an excellent writer and all of the essays are well written and lively. Because many of the essays are book reviews, the essays actually provide handy introductions to certain thinkers. The essays on Schopenhauer and Descartes are a good mix of biographical background and philosophical explanation. There is also an enjoyable introduction to David Stove, an Australian philosopher that Kimball helped introduce to the American public when he edited a collection of his essays a few years back (called AGAINST THE IDOLS OF THE AGE).

I was completely blown away by the power of this book. Not only was it informative for its content, but it really did make me feel quite smarter after completing it. While it did at times appear very dense, and I wished I payed more attention in college, I cannot say enough good things about this book. This collection of essays are truly wise and full of passion. His command of the written word is borderline on staggering. I highly recommend this book to anyone who ever said, "If the world only uses 10% of their brain, how much can I possibly be using right now?"

That Roger Kimball is armed with a formidable erudition has been conceded even by those whose loathing is his highest honor. But an arsenal of erudition is available to anyone with the time, the interest and an IQ slightly above average; it is the deployment of his intellectual armament that distinguishes this author above all but a few others now writing.All the essays in this volume exhibit identical elements: 1) an elegant, lucid, and vigorous style that carries the reader smoothly into, and through, the subject; 2) command of the writings of the author under consideration; 3) mastery of a wide range of the best biographical and critical material; 4) an extended examination of some recent work; 5) a structure which binds all the elements seamlessly together; 6) evaluations that excite an interest in further exploration OR clarify the reader's predilections OR summarize in a cogent manner the reader's pre-existing distaste OR justify the reader's disinclination to waste his time on some over-rated windsock.It is my considered judgement--founded upon prayer and long hours of solitary meditation--that any reader who fails to find these essays interesting should consider confining his future intellecutal explorations to the pages of the TV Guide.