Thomas Sowell's 1951 Publication 'Intellectuals and Society' - An Exploration of the Role of Intellectuals in Society

Joseph Myren: AWESOME

Canada on Oct 02, 2023

George Hayes: I won't give this book a '1' as I have enjoyed and learned from Sowell. I knew and accepted his hard right view of economics when I purchased this book so I was not surprised in it's content.

However this book is a 550+ page word salad of complaints and grievances against liberal academics. He blames liberals for World War 2 and the US loss in Vietnam. He blames black liberal writers for the decline in black neighbourhoods. His vitriol extends to topics he is known for such as economics but also muses about politics and history. It is repetitive and at times childish.

The fundamental reason for this book is to call out liberal academics who may be experts in one field but have opinions unrelated in their studies. Opinions that affect public and political opinions through tv appearances, books and public speaking tours.

But hold on, Sowell himself is someone who strays from his teachings to affect policies through tv appearances, books and public speaking tours.

'Intellectuals and Society' omits more than it includes. Blaming liberals for the 1960's decline of black society, teenage pregnancy and the Vietnam war he completley ignores the major societal...

Canada on Aug 29, 2023

Amazon Customer: Thank you for a great book … so rare to have an intellectual academic write a book worth reading … and that is what author Sowell does so incredibly well

United Kingdom on Jun 24, 2023

Mehry.N: Det är bra för alla som försöker ändra ordningen på orättvisa samhällen

Sweden on Sep 04, 2022

A. Crabtree: “Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them” George Orwell is said to have remarked. Thomas Sowell analyses intellectuals’ self-confident promotion of their empirically challenged ideas via media, aides and activists, the influence of those ideas on governments and societies in place of experience or evidence, and the damage caused.

Sowell defines intellectuals as people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas, in particular that they deal in the ideas and do not apply them. Scientists and engineers are not intellectuals. Mathematicians are not, so that Bertrand Russell as a mathematician was not an intellectual, however when suggesting in 1937 that Britain should completely disarm, he was. George Bernard Shaw, one of the great playwrights, felt confident in saying in 1939, just one week before war broke out, “Herr Hitler is under the powerful thumb of Stalin, whose interest in peace is overwhelming. And everyone except myself is frightened out of his or her wits!” – he was a professional as a playwright but an intellectual in geopolitics.

What does it mean when someone we regard as brilliant, a genius, a mind so superior to...

United Kingdom on Jan 18, 2019

Clay Garner: “Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all—the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding. Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition,

“With all your getting, get understanding.”

“Wisdom requires self-discipline and an understanding of the realities of the world, including the limitations of one’s own experience and of reason itself. The opposite of high intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous. George Orwell said that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool.’’

Sowell clearly belongs this class of ‘intellectuals’.

However, he shines a light in a dark corner of the ‘intellectual’ mind . . .

“The great problem—and the great social danger—with purely internal criteria is that they can easily become sealed off from feedback from the external world of reality and remain circular in their methods of validation. What new idea will seem plausible depends on what one already...

United States on Oct 14, 2018

David L. Bahnsen: I think one of these days I am going to publish a list of the top 10 books that every single thinking person has to read. For a conservative like myself, there are books that have played a formative role in developing, defining, and defending an ideology. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Kirk's The Roots of American Order come to mind - classic works that no serious conservative reader would dare miss.

The list has grown by one this year thanks to Thomas Sowell, and I do not make such a claim easily. While his much earlier masterpiece, Conflict of Visions (1987), could arguably be on the list as well, I believe that his newest book, Intellectuals and Society, is not just Sowell at his finest but is perhaps the very essence of conservative thinking at its finest. The book is remarkably readable, extremely practical, and most of all, is such a lethal combination of head shots and body blows to the parasite of modern intellectualism that one finishes the book feeling splattered by the damage Sowell has done.

At its core, the book seeks to explore the phenomena of public intellectuals who Sowell carefully defines as "people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas"....

United States on Jun 08, 2010