Zena Hitz, "Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life" (Princeton UP, 2020)
Jun 15, 2020
auto_awesome
Author Zena Hitz discusses the hidden joys of intellectual pursuits, from reading in a Swiss patent office to transformative reading experiences in prisons. The podcast explores the importance of genuine leisure activities during lockdowns and the value of intellectual engagement in bridging diverse perspectives. It also delves into the significance of intellectual humility, contemplation, and dignity in education and society, showcasing how intellectual pursuits can elevate individuals from all backgrounds.
Intellectual life encompasses diverse experiences, from studying falcons to creating groundbreaking writings.
Personal reflection is crucial in intellectual pursuits, fostering individual growth and understanding.
Engaging in intellectual endeavors involves confronting limits, fostering humility, and authenticity.
Intellectual pursuits offer insight, personal transformation, and a broader perspective essential for personal development.
Deep dives
The Power of Intellectual Engagement in Academic Book Promotion
Academic books often struggle to gain press coverage due to the lack of specialized PR services. Collaborations like the one between the New Books Network and R.L.M. aim to fill this gap by offering targeted promotion services for academic authors. The focus is on providing genuine value at an affordable price, addressing a unique need in the academic book promotion landscape.
Exploring the Hidden Pleasures of Intellectual Life
Zina Hits delves into the concept of the intellectual life, emphasizing that it entails more than solitary reading. She highlights that intellectual engagement extends to various real-world experiences, from studying falcons to creating groundbreaking writings in challenging environments. Hits underlines the richness of intellectual pursuits, citing examples such as young Einstein's patent office job and Dorothy Day's transformative encounters with literature.
The Inner Dialogue of Intellectual Contemplation
Hits presents intellectual life as an inward journey, emphasizing the importance of introspection and personal reflection. She discusses how intellectual endeavors begin in private contemplation, fostering individual growth and understanding. Hits' viewpoint on the intellectual life underscores the significance of internal dialogue and personal exploration in shaping intellectual pursuits.
The Value of Inwardness and Authentic Intellectual Engagement
Hits examines the intrinsic connection between intellectual pursuits and personal growth, emphasizing that intellectual engagement goes beyond external outcomes. She discusses the balance between sacrifice and intellectual endeavor, noting that intellectual life inherently involves confronting one's limits and fostering a deeper appreciation for truth and knowledge. Hits emphasizes the significance of intellectual humility and authenticity in nurturing a genuine intellectual life.
Importance of Intellectual Life
Intellectual life offers a refuge from distress, a source of insight and understanding, and a means of personal transformation. Engaging in intellectual pursuits cultivates aspirations and provides a broader perspective. It serves as a vital aspect of human existence, essential for personal growth and development.
Challenges in Higher Education
The current state of higher education faces a crisis with the shift towards centralized, cheap, and online learning models. While cost-effective, centralized approaches can compromise the quality of teaching and learning. The future of higher education may involve a transition towards freelance, grassroots educational models, emphasizing personal attention and hands-on learning experiences.
Impact of Coronavirus on Education
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of in-person learning and the limitations of online education. Students have expressed dissatisfaction with online learning methods, indicating a preference for personal interaction and engagement. The crisis in higher education presents both challenges and opportunities for reevaluating the value and delivery of educational experiences.
Do you have an active intellectual life? That is a question you may feel uncomfortable answering these days given that the very phrase “intellectual life” can strike some people as pretentious or self-indulgent, even irresponsible in a time of pandemic disease. But what better time could there be for an examination of the subject of the inner life? And what is “the intellectual life,” anyway?
In her 2020 book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life(Princeton University Press, 2020), Zena Hitz explores the interior world and shows that intellectual endeavor is not simply a matter of reading by oneself but can encompass everything from a lifelong fascination with falcons to strategies for retaining one’s sanity and humanity in a gulag or producing ground-breaking political and sociological writings in a prison cell in Mussolini’s Italy.
In the course of her book, Hitz deploys real-world examples from young Einstein in his day job in a Swiss patent office to Malcolm X’s encounter with the fellow prison inmate who first urged him to embark on a life-changing course of reading to Dorothy Day’s encounters with books throughout her life and their influence on her youthful secular radicalism to her conversion to Catholicism and continued activism. We also encounter St. Augustine and take a deep dive into Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and travel with a Preston Sturges hero in a screwball comedy/social commentary film.
Hitz’s reader-friendly examination of the intellectual life is ideal reading for the millions of us confined to our homes due to the coronavirus and who now have time to read and think seriously about matters of mortality and the meaning of life, which are suddenly front and center in our daily lives.
And at a time of pandemic-related economic peril for liberal arts colleges and programs, Hitz’s take on what ailed them even before our current crisis and her prescription for a way forward for those that survive the next several years are must reading for not only academics but all citizens who care about how civilization itself carries on.
