Intellectualism

Intellectualism is the mental perspective that emphasizes the use, the development, and the exercise of the intellect; and also identifies the life of the mind of the intellectual person. In the field of philosophy, the term intellectualism is synonymous with rationalism, knowledge derived from reason. In the field of sociology, the term intellectualism also has a socially negative connotation about intellectual people giving "too much attention to thinking" (single-mindedness of purpose) and thus show an "absence of affection and feeling" (emotional coldness). Hierarchical Intellectualism is any hierarchical theory of intelligence which postulates that the mental abilities that constitute intelligence occur and are arranged in a hierarchy (series of levels) that ranges from the general to the specific, e.g. the I.Q. test. Moral intellectualism The Greek philosopher Socrates (c. 470–399 BC) said that intellectualism allows that "one will do what is right or [what is] best, just as soon as one truly understands what is right or best"; that virtue is a matter of the intellect, because virtue and Knowledge are related qualities that a person accrues, possesses, and improves by dedication to the use of Reason. Socrates's definition of moral intellectualism is a basis of the philosophy of Stoicism, wherein the consequences of that definition are called "Socratic paradoxes", such as "There is no weakness of will", because a person either knowingly does evil or knowingly seeks to do evil (moral wrong); that anyone who does commit evil or seeks to commit evil does so involuntarily; and that virtue is knowledge, that there are few virtues, but that all virtues are one. The conceptions of Truth and of Knowledge of contemporary philosophy are unlike Socrates’s conceptions of Truth and Knowledge and of ethical conduct, and cannot be equated with modern, post–Cartesian conceptions of knowledge and rational intellectualism.