Brendan O’Neill reviews Frank Furedi’s new book “Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?”
‘Dumbing down’ is often seen as being about the rise of reality TV and other dumb culture. In fact, says Frank Furedi, the problem is much bigger than Big Brother.‘Cultural institutions like universities and galleries no longer challenge us or encourage us to question what we know. Instead they flatter us. But flattery will get us nowhere.’ Not content with having taken on risk-aversion, therapy culture and the paranoid parenting industry in his previous books, Furedi, a sociologist and prolific author who doesn’t suffer faddish thinking gladly, lays in to dumbing down (or ‘twenty-first century philistinism’ as he prefers to call it) in his latest offering.
Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?, described by former Oxford don Terry Eagleton as a ‘vitally important book’, is a short and sharp critique of the way in which intellectual life has been degraded. MORE
See also former posts:
The Psychological Turn of Public Policy - a lecture given by Professor Furedi at the Policy Exchange, 2 December 2003.
Theodore Dalrymple reviews Therapy Culture by Frank Furedi
‘PANIC ATTACK: INTERROGATING OUR OBSESSION WITH RISK’ - Furedi made an excellent speech at this event.
Singleton society by Frank Furedi
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