An intellectual is a person who primarily uses intelligence in either a professional or an individual capacity. As a substantive or adjective, it refers to the work product of such persons, to the so-called "life of the mind" generally, or to an aspect of something where learning, erudition, and informed and critical thinking are the focus, as in "the intellectual level of the discourse on the matter was not high".
The intellectual is a specific variety of the intelligent, which unlike the general property, is strictly associated with reason and thinking. Many everyday roles require the application of intelligence to skills that may have a psychomotor component, for example, in the fields of medicine, sport or the arts, but these do not necessarily involve the practitioner in the "world of ideas". The distinctive quality of the intellectual person is that the mental skills, which he or she demonstrates, are not simply intelligent, but even more, they focus on thinking about the abstract, philosophical and esoteric aspects of human inquiry and the value of their thinking.
Traditionally, the scholarly and the intellectual classes were closely identified; however, while intellectuals need not necessarily be actively involved in scholarship, they often have an academic background and will typically have an association with a profession.
More broadly, any work of the mind may be termed intellectual property, whether or not its content is "intellectual" in the sense covered in this article. Intellectuals include not only philosophers, interested in epistemology, but also others in the arts and sciences, plus the humanities, with no boundaries as to fields of study.
Read more about Intellectual: Terminology and Endeavours, Historical Perspectives, Public Intellectual Life
Other articles related to "intellectual, intellectuals":
... It has been suggested that public intellectuals bridge the gap between the academic elite and the educated public, particularly when concerning issues in the ... There are distinct differences between academics, in the traditional sense, and public intellectuals ... This has become known as "the academisation of intellectual life" ...
... of the three dimensions represents as a unique intellectual ability, such as comprehension of semantic relations that is, understanding analogies ... a test that identifies an individual's aptitude on the multiple intellectual abilities identified in the Structure of Intellect model and 2) the ...
... Intellectual property (IP) is a legal concept which refers to creations of the mind for which exclusive rights are recognized ... Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works ... Common types of intellectual property rights include copyright, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights, trade dress, and in some jurisdictions trade secrets ...
... The stated objective of most intellectual property law (with the exception of trademarks) is to "Promote progress." By exchanging limited exclusive rights for disclosure of inventions and creative works ... Some commentators have noted that the objective of intellectual property legislators and those who support its implementation appears to be "absolute protection." "If some intellectual ... This absolute protection or full value view treats intellectual property as another type of 'real' property, typically adopting its law and rhetoric ...
... A Tui is an intellectual who sells his or her abilities and opinions as a commodity in the marketplace or who uses them to support the dominant ideology of an oppressive society ... in the mid-1930s for his so-called Tui-Novel—an unfinished satire on intellectuals in the German Empire and Weimar Republic—and his epic comedy from the early 1950s, Turandot or the Whitewashers' Congress ... The word is a neologism that results from the acronym of a word play on "intellectual" ("Tellekt-Ual-In") ...
Famous quotes containing the word intellectual:
“People never will recollect that mere learning and mere cleverness are of next to no value in life, while energy and intellectual grip, the things that are inborn and cannot be taught, are everything.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one’s own.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Nothing ... is so ungrateful as a rising generation; yet, if there is any faintest glimmer of light ahead of us in the present, it was kindled by the intellectual fires that burned long before us.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)