Read a well-argued and beautifully crafted essay, Three Differences Between an Academic and an Intellectual. Warrants further study. The author makes three points (quoted and italicized verbatim):
1. An academic has and wants an audience disproportionately made up of teachers and students, while an intellectual has and wants teachers and students in his audience only in proportion to their place in the general educated public.
2. An academic is a specialist who has disciplined his curiosity to operate largely within a designated area, while an intellectual is a generalist who deliberately does otherwise.
3. An academic is concerned with substance and suspicious of style, while an intellectual is suspicious of any substance that purports to transcend or defy style.
He asserts that neither is more important than the other, that both follow completely valid quests for knowledge and both require a great deal of training and discipline. Equal minds, different planes.
I may have come away with a skewed interpretation (being neither academic nor intellectual) but it would seem that the core beliefs between the two are opposed — perhaps not diametrically — but in the sense that they at least operate independently of each other. Is this a valid interpretation?
If that is indeed what the author suggests, I would have to differ. My conclusion after reading the essay is that academics and intellectuals form a symbiotic relationship in which survival would not be possible otherwise. Without intellectuals, academics would not be able to disseminate their ideas into larger society and thus gain aspiring scholars into their fellowship. On the other hand, without academics, intellectuals would have nothing to study and generalize about and thus cease to exist.
While his analogy to hunter / farmer is framed with the best intent, I believe a supplier / distributor model would be more apt and further emphasize their dependence. Anyways, correct me if I am stupid.