The Intellectual Life -- Collection of Links

The Intellectual Life:  Its Spirit, Method and Conditions by AG Sertillanges is rather a unique work.  Written by a Dominican priest and first published in 1920, it has been reprinted more recently with a new introduction by Fr James Schall.    I read it first about 7 years ago and have reread it a couple of times since.    I have often wanted to blog about it, but it is difficult.   One wants to simply quote it.  There is a kind of simplicity about it, very different from the usual "how to improve yourself" genre.   In fact, it reads more as a retreat with practical elements.

I am going to link to a few other mentions of the book across the internet.   That way I won't have to repeat general introductions that others have already given. 

• From Our Collections (Catholic Library)

On the practical side, reading methods, memory techniques and note-taking are all covered. In writing about the management of memory, Sertillanges declares that "We do not live by memory, we use our memory to live." He sees memory as a tool that should be organised so as to function usefully. He emphasises the importance of connection in remembering: "Look always for what connects this thing with that; let this co-ordination, and not scattered fragments, fix itself in your memory."

• Guru-Focus review of the book

For Sertillanges, intellectual work is not something done in isolation of the rest of a person's life. He believes strongly that in order to do intellectual work to one's capacity, one must order the whole of one's life with this goal in mind. And further, that this requires habits of simplicity, detachment, note taking, memory, writing and more. His book is thus a step-by-step manual that sets out these requirements from the general (virtues, character) to the specific (note-taking, writing). 

• 4 Things Every Intellectually Minded Person Should Remember

Sertillanges’ counsel goes beyond the hours of intellectual activity. There is even a disciplined way to sleep! “Sleep itself is a worker,” he writes. It is during sleep that our brains continue to work and connect the truths we have been studying. One should not view rest as a necessary evil, but as one of the scholar’s great blessings. A life of constant discipline will lead us to maintain a routine that maximizes our energy and output.

“The best way of all to relax would be, if possible, not to get tired” (244).

ISI wrote a whole series:

• Part I

We want to develop breadth of mind, to practice comparative study, to keep the horizon before us; these things cannot be done without much reading. But much and little are opposites only in the same domain. . . [M]uch is necessary in the absolute sense, because the work to be done is vast; but little, relatively to the deluge of writing that…floods our libraries and our minds nowadays. . . . What we are proscribing is the passion for reading, the uncontrolled habit, the poisoning of the mind by excess of mental food, the laziness in disguise which prefers easy familiarity with others’ thought to personal effort. . . . The passion for reading which many pride themselves on as a precious intellectual quality is in reality a defect; it differs in no wise from other passions that monopolize the soul , keep it in a state of disturbance, set it in uncertain currents and cross-currents, and exhaust its powers

• Part II

With regard to solitude, specifically, the amount of concentrated intellectual work that is required in the intellectual vocation, Sertillanges’ prescription is quite surprising:

Have you two hours a day? Can you undertake to guard them jealously, to use them ardently, and then, being of those who have authority in the Kingdom of God, can you drink the chalice of which these pages would wish you to make you savor the exquisite and bitter taste? If so, have confidence. Nay, rest in quiet certainty.

 

• Part III

 St. Paul tells us to pray constantly, meaning that prayer is to be engaged in not only during those hours set-aside daily for liturgical and vocal and mental prayers, but at every moment. Prayer is spiritual breathing, the heartbeat of the soul. For Sertillanges, the intellectual life must be similarly continuous and perpetual. How? “What do we need, in order to utilize this permanent life in the service of truth? Discipline only. The dynamos must be connected to the turbines; the turbines must be turned by the steam; the desire to know must, regularly and not intermittently, set the conscious or unconscious activity of the brain in motion”

• Part IV

“Now that philosophy has failed in its duty, the sciences fall to a lower level and scatter their effort; now that theology is unknown, philosophy is sterile, comes to no conclusion, has no standard of criticism, no bearings for its study of history; . . . it does not teach” (108). Theological wisdom, which is to say, what can be intellectually gleaned from the immeasurable depths of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the authoritative teachings of the Church, is the sine qua non of the intellectual life.

• Part V

Sertillanges knows that the intellectual, especially in our frenetic, news-overloaded global village, can not completely avoid downloading contemporary events and opinions; he is incapable of repairing by a simple act of will to the Platonic world of ideal and eternal forms. Furthermore, we need the matter of worldly goings-on to ground and feed our incipient universal ideas. His advice: “A serious worker should be content . . . with the weekly or bi-monthly chronicle in a review; and for the rest, with keeping his ears open, and turning to the daily papers only when a remarkable article or grave event is brought to his notice”

 A few more links to comments on the book:

• A book recommendation to a serious student
• Preface to the Intellectual Life
• Life of the Mind as Vocation
• The Intellectual Life:  Summary of Part I