Angelus News | July 2, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 13

That said, I don’t think there are
enough books about intellectual life!
Sertillanges is a hundred years old.
Think of how many books we have to
help us to pray. Prayer is more important
than thinking, but there should
still be almost as many books to help
believers and nonbelievers to think.
Are the same impediments and distractions
common to all the ages? Is
there anything peculiar to our time?
Human beings of all times and
places face the same challenges on
a basic level: our need to please and
impress others, our desire for comfort
rather than greatness, our aversion to
suffering. But our age is special in that
we have large corporations that have
developed sophisticated ways to make
money off of our worst impulses.
Technology reaches into even the
most intimate corners of our lives. We
need to remember that as we face our
technological distractions, someone is
making money off us. We can’t trust
the masters of technology to act only
with our good in mind.
In your book, you describe an intellectual
or vocational conversion —
and your religious conversion. Is it
possible to make a hard distinction
between the two? Or was it the same
work in two movements?
I found my way from a more conventional
and high-prestige intellectual
life to a more authentic one, in the
years following my conversion from a
secular nonbeliever into a Catholic.
I think the movements are probably
distinct in principle, in that some people
do resolve difficulties about the
meaning of work without the benefits
of faith.
But for me, the recovery of my intellectual
vocation was a development of
my original conversion, the fruit of my
rebirth in faith. It came to me from
following the teachings of the Church
about prayer, discernment, and sacrifice,
and I definitely experienced it as
grace.
Your book is rich and yet the language
is simple. There’s no specialized
vocabulary to be mastered. It’s
a work of philosophy in the manner
of Augustine or Pascal. How did you
come to write it this way?
I’m very flattered to be compared
with Augustine or Pascal! I wanted
to reach as many people as possible.
I was convinced that the message of
the book would matter to all sorts of
people, not just academics or Catholic
academics. So I made an effort to
avoid any jargon.
It’s also true that the book is the fruit
of my philosophical, intellectual, and
spiritual maturity. I lived for a few
years in the Madonna House community,
and that time had the effect
of bringing focus and clarity to my
thinking, and it helped to detach me
from the narrower academic audiences
I used to write for.
You draw examples of intellectual
life from surprising places, not just
professors, authors, and professional
thinkers, but laborers and prisoners.
You take pains to do this and even
draw attention to it. Why is that?
I’m persuaded that intellectual
life is for everyone, not just for the
professionals. Success distorts our
perception of what intellectual life is.
It isn’t leading a fancy lifestyle with
wine-and-cheese parties, and it isn’t
the power and prestige of publishing
books or having one’s name in print.
Because those things belong to the
professional forms of intellectual life,
professionals just don’t display the
meaning of the intellectual life as
well.
Not that none of us professionals are
authentic, but it is harder to see that
we are. Whereas a political prisoner
under a totalitarian regime might pursue
the intellectual life for no reason
other than his or her own dignity, to
develop his or her humanity. They
get no status, no encouragement; no
one may even know what they are
doing. Likewise, there are all kinds
of ordinary people whose intellectual
pursuits are only known to their
friends or family. We can all aspire to
an intellectual life of this kind.
The men and women who fight for
the time and the space to think and
to read, whether they be working
people, or caregivers, or religious, are
my heroes. They know why thinking
matters, and professionals like me are
always in danger of losing touch and
getting distracted.
July 2, 2021 • ANGELUS • 11