Hannah Arendt: political theorist who doesn't give a shit if you're smart

Hannah Arendt writes in The Human Condition that speech and action reveal man (that's her word, not mine) in his distinctness.  These are the "modes through which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men.  This appearence, as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on intitaitve, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human."  She goes on to stipulate that "A life without speech and without action, on the other hand...is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men."

You have to show up and do stuff, and do it in public in front of other people and with risk involved, in order to be a complete person, Arendt argues.  Life is achieved, not given.

Looking over The Human Condition I am struck by just how little it valorizes intelligence for its own sake.  Here one of the greatest theorists of the 20c tells us to shine forth in the public and strive in front of our betters, distinguish ourselves as excellent.  Sure, one can do this as an intellectual, as she did, but one doesn't have to. 

What Arendt says is the kind of thing you'd tell a group of high school students, not a group of professional academics.  But this is only to the detriment of the academics, and if the high school students have taken to heart her lessons of striving, excellence, and distinction, then they have set themselves up for no small portion of happiness.
Academic talks are followed by ritual dinners at affordable local restaurants where the talk ranges from lighter professional topics to the various amenities of the college town the speaker is from to the shockingly backward political and religious beliefs of the residents of that town to whether folks have seen the latest movies.  One night I was at one of these dinners and people got to talking about the financial crisis and apropos of I forget what, I commented: "I think we in the humanities tend to underestimate how smart finance people can be."  The reply on the part of our guest speaker betrayed a mixture of envy and probably some uncomfortable family dynamics: "Well, my brother-in-law," he bantered back, "is in finanance and he certainly isn't brilliant.  It doesn't take too much brains."

A man in his late-40s/early-50s gave a talk about the history of interdisciplinary scholarship to about ten graduate students, about two of whom could muster up the enthusiasm to feign the sycophancy requisite on such occasions; his brother-in-law, meanwhile, had been in the throws of history, riding tidal fortune and in some way participating in, or suffering through, the big story of his times. 

Alvin Kernan was a WWII sailor who went to college on the GI Bill and became an English professor at Yale, and eventually, Stephen Greenblatt's advisor; he then went on to become Dean of the Graduate School at Princeton.  In his memior (which is an extremely interesting read) Kernan says of incoming English graduate students that of all the hundreds who apply each year to programs around the country, on a few are really outstanding.  It's a hard truth that he tells, but one worth facing directly.  Looking through the names in an old journal is like looking at the names of the tracks on an Fleetwood Mac album in a used record store: maybe, just maybe, one is recognizable.  The rest are forgetable throwaways.

I used to worry about being smart, and I used to think intelligence was something to admire in people.  I don't admire it.  I am sometimes bowled over by it, but I don't admire it.  I used to think that critique was special, that when I heard an academic paper applying Zizek to the news I was hearing something empowering and penetrating and disillusioning. 

I don't really care about being smart anymore.  I care about reading and writing because I enjoy these activities, but I am beyond worrying about my own native abilities (what ever native ability is) and beyond secretely measuring them against the strengths and weaknesses of others.  (What did Lionel Trilling mean by the moral obligation to be intelligent?)  Perhaps to admit this is a cardinal sin of academe.