Intellectual Generosity

A friend once asked me why I organize seminars, like the (anti-)Social (anti-)Bodies seminar, that invite others to participate whether or not they can make the time and take the initiative to read the referenced texts. I told this friend that the seminars that I organize aren’t “out-reading” groups but, rather, “reading-in” groups, and I wrote the four theses below in order to develop this distinction.

One.

A statement that has become typical of the intellectual: “Well, first you have to read … before you can say anything about ...” 

This statement, and so many others like it, are statements in and through which the intellectual makes themself exclusive, part of an in-group, a group of those “in-the-know”. This is the statement of the intellectual who, consciously or unconsciously, gets their rocks off by “out-reading” the other, kicking up dust as they leave the other behind.

I have little patience for such intellectuals. They are misers or, to hit the nail more squarely on the head, they are no more than academic intellectuals.

Two.

As a counterfoil to academic intellectuals, I want to make the case for magnanimous intellectuals who “read-in” others instead of “out-reading” others.

The magnanimous intellectual who believes that a text that has knowledge that another person needs will read that text into their conversations and correspondence with the other person. In other words, the magnanimous intellectual, the intellectual who is more than an academic, finds ways to impart knowledge to others in and through their conversations and correspondence with others.

If you know that a text provides knowledge that another person needs, you must have received that knowledge from the text yourself. Ay, and if you have already received that knowledge from the text yourself, you can provide that knowledge to the other person yourself. This, of course, puts the burden on you to backtrack and to explain, but that is what it means to be to be generous: it is generous to shoulder burdens for others. 

Three.

The magnanimous intellectual doesn’t out-read others but, rather, reads-ahead for others and then backtracks in order to read-in others, providing others with intelligence that will help them determine what they ought to read for themselves.

If the magnanimous intellectual who reads-ahead doesn’t feel confident that they can provide knowledge from a text to another person, then the magnanimous intellectual cannot be confident that a text provides any knowledge at all. In that case, all that the magnanimous intellectual can offer is to read the text alongside the other person.

Four.

Magnanimous intellectuals do not tell others to keep quiet on a topic until they have read the book on the topic. Instead, magnanimous intellectuals either (i) converse and correspond on the topic with others in order to provide them with the knowledge they have received from the book, (ii) offer to read the book alongside others, (iii) patiently listen to others, or (iv) withdraw from conversation and correspondence with others.

Options (iii) and (iv) are vital options for magnanimous intellectuals. They must turn to option (iii), listening patiently, when they have reason to believe that the other intends to abuse the knowledge that a text might provide and, subsequently, they must turn to option (iv), withdrawing from conversation and correspondence, when the other expresses an intent to abuse knowledge.