2008 Woodie Awards
'Romantic intellectualism' not an oxymoron
Tina Korbe
Issue date: 4/21/08 Section: Opinion
Since the beginning of my freshman year, I've cultivated friendships among a group of scientifically-minded, impressively-ambitious and conscientiously-crazy boys who consistently challenge my dearly-held assumptions and unfailingly inspire me to laugh. I dearly depend on these boys for helpful doses of head-clearing. And I'm extraordinarily grateful to them for illustrating by example that the reasonable approach to solving a problem is actually sometimes preferable to the emotional one.
For their own benefit, though, the guys should quit trying to curb my old-fashioned sentimentality. For one thing, they are, whether they realize it or not, incredibly reliant on my girlish exuberance because, without it, they'd have no fodder for making fun. For another, my solid sentimentality likely won't evaporate anytime soon.
Let Matthew call me primitive. Let Adam and Zeke bemoan my imprudent, giddy enchantment at the idea of becoming engaged as a sophomore in college. Let Drew define me as so predictably traditional as to almost be willing to eschew electricity for kerosene lamps. I will still insistently deliver idealistic rhetoric to rival Ewan McGregor as the penniless writer Christian in "Moulin Rouge."
To maintain romantic idealism in my current cultural context isn't easy, however. From administrators, professors and peers, I'm handed the verdict: love is a guilty pleasure. The people around me seem to say: if you hope to achieve intellectual advancement, you must relegate romance to the realm of foolishness and regard relationships as hopelessly indulgent luxuries.
Well, I refuse. I rail against the idea that it is impossible to be both an intellectual and a romantic. In my opinion, neither "intellectual romanticism" nor "romantic intellectualism" is an oxymoron. I insist that integration of the two is possible.
So far from undermining intellectual advancement, romance, with its essence of uncertainty, teaches us to live with ignorance. And the first step to gaining knowledge, Socrates tells us, is to make peace with not knowing. Romance enables us to live fruitfully regardless of whether we can explain the relationship between conscious states and neurobiological processes.
For their own benefit, though, the guys should quit trying to curb my old-fashioned sentimentality. For one thing, they are, whether they realize it or not, incredibly reliant on my girlish exuberance because, without it, they'd have no fodder for making fun. For another, my solid sentimentality likely won't evaporate anytime soon.
Let Matthew call me primitive. Let Adam and Zeke bemoan my imprudent, giddy enchantment at the idea of becoming engaged as a sophomore in college. Let Drew define me as so predictably traditional as to almost be willing to eschew electricity for kerosene lamps. I will still insistently deliver idealistic rhetoric to rival Ewan McGregor as the penniless writer Christian in "Moulin Rouge."
To maintain romantic idealism in my current cultural context isn't easy, however. From administrators, professors and peers, I'm handed the verdict: love is a guilty pleasure. The people around me seem to say: if you hope to achieve intellectual advancement, you must relegate romance to the realm of foolishness and regard relationships as hopelessly indulgent luxuries.
Well, I refuse. I rail against the idea that it is impossible to be both an intellectual and a romantic. In my opinion, neither "intellectual romanticism" nor "romantic intellectualism" is an oxymoron. I insist that integration of the two is possible.
So far from undermining intellectual advancement, romance, with its essence of uncertainty, teaches us to live with ignorance. And the first step to gaining knowledge, Socrates tells us, is to make peace with not knowing. Romance enables us to live fruitfully regardless of whether we can explain the relationship between conscious states and neurobiological processes.
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Brother Bear
posted 4/21/08 @ 3:19 PM CST
Excellent article. I propose this evidence that the "capacity for connection" is just as much a part of our psyche as any intellectual, rational observation, and that is your primary reactions to emotions. (Continued…)
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