House of Intellect Book

People are calling THIS book pretentious? I don't understand. These concepts are as easy to grasp as any other... In fact, I'd say the writing is superb, in that, I got something out of almost every page of it.

Barzun's stance is basically that intellectuals (philosophers, artists, vanguard practitioners, etc.) are facing a difficult dilemma, especially in academia: In one corner the intellectual can coerce into academia and become another government tool, albeit, a financially stable and social one; and in the other corner, the intellectual can manifest his/her own destiny and face the risk of being scorned by an institutionalized public that has been taught to coax these historically eccentric hyper-intellectuals into coercion, and risk the financial benefits of being owned by the government. That is an extremely important principal that has become only more of a problem since the date of publication.

Barzun warned us an impending endemic of a pseudo-democratic-anti-intellectualism-society and now we have one.

If American human creativity wants to have any place in this world in the future America must foster it's talents wisely. Barzun hits most things right on the mark in terms of this problem.

My personal response to it that I know people who have children at an early age (and drug-abusers, and even ex-prisoners) -- they have more housing/welfare opportunities that say, a struggling autonomous intellectual, or a gifted artist. Or worse yet, there are millions and millions of people who've based their lives on coercion and maintain the pretense of a dull character. Yet, they are granted a job on spot because of their uncritical demeanors. Intellectuals are critical and delve into the history of things and try to understand them: hence, an unwillingness to work for lackluster companies, or unethical institutions (most jobs fall under one of these categories, sadly).

Overall, this book was easily digestible. But, I read a sizable amount of philosophy. Barzun has some of the most fluid writing I've ever encountered in philosophy (more so than Foucault, Chomsky or Derrida especially). And not only that, but his ideas are good, but not always feasible (in this book he stated that the Top 5 percent should be sheltered in universities -- FIRST and FOREMOST -- as if that were an ideal situation... -- (but that's a rare exception)).