Debate has become less about the pursuit of truth and more about performing intelligence for an audience.

“I picked the cotton and I carried it to market and I built the railroads under someone else’s whip.”

The most successful cultural critics of our digital age are simply a different kind of influencer, one who may sell a worldview rather than a skincare routine, but are selling something nonetheless.

Ideas are no longer for discussion, they’re for consumption.

“Academic life has become more professionalised. They write for each other, not for the general reader. Academic political philosophy ­today, for example, has zero influence on the practice of politics. I doubt now whether any politician could name a leading academic philosopher. No one would know who they were.”

Public intellectuals aren’t becoming difficult to find because we’re in any kind of deficit of brilliant thinkers, but because the space for these figures has nearly disappeared. Intellectual influencer’s today—though brilliant in their own right—have to contend with branding themselves for social media. They have to publish articles and make... See more

She doesn’t make us think, she makes us aspire

That was the ability and purpose of the public intellectual— to challenge deeply held beliefs, to present ideas so undeniable that they could break through even the most firm ideologies.

We no longer look to those who challenge us intellectually, we look to those who offer us a perfectly packaged lifestyle.