[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

[Ian Glendinning]

DMB said (amongst other things).

"It seems to me that the level of abstraction is key to the difference
between social and intellectual levels. That is in terms of the
quality of intelligence or thinking itself. But historically speaking,
it's also a matter of which values are in charge ..."

I think that is the key too, in distinguishing the social & intellectual levels.

Intellectual ... the conceptual abstraction is deliberately detached
from (prevailing) social values... in that sense it is "individual"
relative to that collective society and "free" relative to the power
of that society. (Clearly, symbolic manipulation is part of both
levels.)

I think the confusion arises when intellectual ideas are introduced to
the actual operation of a society ... as they must ... and become
adopted by the power (governance and political arrangements, formal
and informal) ... when the intellectual concepts can in fact become
social patterns - often particularly powerful social patterns - but
social patterns none-the-less. It's the process of history that
matters.

Ian

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:56 AM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>