A manifesto for intellectual life

Intellectual life is not a merely professional activity, to be left to experts. Because its central goods are good universally, it belongs in taxicabs, at the beach house or the book club, in the break room at work, in the backyard of the amateur botanist, in thoughtful reflection whether scattered or disciplined, as much as or more than it does at universities.

I learned over time, first as a graduate student and then as a young professor, that the amateur’s human questions are always the best questions for scholars to start from.