What City would you consider the Intellectual Capital of the World? (home, university)

[erasure]

Originally Posted by Neuling

I guess that is because it has been quite some time ago, plus we are not used to thinking globally and historically. We grow up thinking of ourselves as the permanent center of the world...

I am not the one who is "thinking of ourselves as the permanent center of the world" - I am pointing at Western Europe as the countries of highest achievements in the modern world.
( I am not a Westerner, I am a Moscovite, remember?)

[amIayankee?]

Taking an "intellectual" approach, you must deconstruct the question and then put it back together.

Say you are a so called intellectual in China (since this post has focused much on the west), you certainly will not continue to speak your beliefs there. You would have to flee in order to do so. From this example, totalitarian countries might seem not to be the place for obvious reasons. For true intellectual cultivation free thought must reign. Places suitable for this are rare. But obvious places for it are the US and many countries in western and northern europe. Japan would also meet this criteria.

But where (and from what country) do true intellectuals, those like this Chomsky who need no explanation reside? I would have to place my judgement, in today's world that it would be in the NE USA, probably Cambridge. We have to ask ourselves where are the most piercing and revealing thoughts coming from today? Legally/constitutionally this is still most protected in the US.

I feel like there are plenty of factors that can influence a particular city and place to be filled with intellectual activity:

A lot of those factors:

-Infrastructure in a particular place that supports people becoming intelligent (good schools, plenty of cultural stuff to do, plenty of people in a single place aspiring to become intelligent)

-Percentage of population with college degrees

- The vibrancy, and quality of the Economy.

-Large Government influence

-The role of that city/place in the country it is in and the role of that particular country in the world.


Based on factors like that, I would definitely say there is more than one city and place that acts as the “intellectual capital of the world.” Places like London, Paris, Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Moscow, Oslo, Taipei, Seoul, Toronto, Montreal, Zurich, Geneva, Cambridge, Oxford, and Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco metro area) all seem like the intellectual capitals in the world. So the world has plenty of intellectual capitals.


Also cities like Athens, Rome, Philadelphia, Istanbul, and Cairo USED to be some of the most intellectual cities in the world before in the past but I don’t think they are some of the most intellectual cities anymore and they don’t qualify for the current list and in this current time.

[erasure]

Originally Posted by amIayankee?

Taking an "intellectual" approach, you must deconstruct the question and then put it back together.

Say you are a so called intellectual in China (since this post has focused much on the west), you certainly will not continue to speak your beliefs there. You would have to flee in order to do so. From this example, totalitarian countries might seem not to be the place for obvious reasons. For true intellectual cultivation free thought must reign. Places suitable for this are rare. But obvious places for it are the US and many countries in western and northern europe. Japan would also meet this criteria.

Oh boy, where should I start...
"So-called intellectual" in China might flee or might not flee - it depends on what his/her interests are, and how much courage this person has, but the fact that this person speaks ( and intelligently at that) against the existing system instead of conforming to it like thousand others does make this person true intellectual. This person might be much more true to a meaning of the word "intellectual" than someone who is artificially "cultivated" within the walls of prestigious University, conforming to the point of view he/she has been taught.
See, "true intellectuals" do not necessarily appear where they are "cultivated"; more often they appear in places ( or times) that are full of controversies, that provoke intellectual thought. In that sense Moscow for example is much more perfect place for it than New-York.

But where (and from what country) do true intellectuals, those like this Chomsky who need no explanation reside?

Out of all people someone like Chomsky DOES need an explanation. He is a son of Russian Jews ( and so is Maslow by the way,) and Russian Jews have a long history of being controversial figures in certain major events, plus many of them ( being intellectuals) had an impact on Russian cultural life.
Chomsky's life in New-York was not an exception in that sense in many ways, since he went through antisemitism living in "Jewish getto," plus take in consideration the times he went through ( second world war,) and the impact his Jewish relatives made on him - so there were definitely more factors that contributed to his intellectualism than some "intellectual cultivation" behind the University walls.

[mrconfusion87]

Its all relative! It depends on whose school of thought you are following! :P

[eskercurve]

I think a lot of people are confusing smart or intelligent with being intellectual. Typically being smart is required to become intellectual but simply being smart isn't being an intellectual. Similarly, belonging to a technical field like engineering isn't the same as being intellectual. To be an intellectual is to be someone who comments on culture itself, trends in it, and generally be an "observer" of the mainstream.

IMHO Europe doesn't come close to where it once was in the 1700s and 1800s because it was then that you saw real debates on what the future direction of society should be. Perhaps the only time as fruitful in Western intellectual thought were the 1930s, WWII, and through the 1960s, as Communism brought the serious challenge to our central tenet that freedom of expression and democracy with free market economics were the best we have today. Since these eras we've seen what is practical.

I agree Russia, Moscow in particular, has always wanted to be European but possibly not in the same manner and critique the West's methods. I would wager China's elites are debating what us best for the future and whether mercantilism should continue to be the future, and given China's material rise, how to handle the rising intellectual crowd, especially the types like Ai Wei Wei.

[jeffredo]

For a fairly large city I would say Boston. I'm not speaking so much of high tech innovation and such (although Boston as that) - more the pursuit of liberal arts.

[Texas User]

San Francisco.

[BigCityDreamer]

Originally Posted by eskercurve

IMHO Europe doesn't come close to where it once was in the 1700s and 1800s because it was then that you saw real debates on what the future direction of society should be.

Even though Europe's peak may be in the past, I think the intellectual tradition of the western world is still mostly rooted in Europe. The greatest writers, poets, dramatists, theologians, philosophers, composers, artists, architects, etc., of all time inevitably draw us to Europe.

Whenever anyone thinks of high culture, most of the time what they really mean is European culture.

[Kkakdugi]

Seoul.