From the early 15th century until late in the 18th, such scholars
formed what Anthony Grafton, in "Worlds Made by Words," calls the
"Republic of Letters."
It was a peculiar republic: "
It had no borders, no government, and
no capital." It fostered a lofty notion of equality among the learned
but stooped at times to "grubby practices," ostracizing those who
seemed to flout its (unwritten) protocols.
And this there's this bit of description Amazon posts about the book:
In this book Anthony Grafton lets us in on one of the great secrets of scholars and intellectuals: although scholars lead solitary lives in order to win independence of mind, they also enjoy the conviviality of sharing a project sustained by common ideals, practices, and institutions. It’s like Masonry, but without the secret handshakes.
Grafton reveals the microdynamics of the scholarly life through a series of essays on institutions and on scholars ranging from early modern polymaths to modern intellectual historians to American thinkers and writers. He takes as his starting point the republic of letters—that loose society of intellectuals that first took shape in the sixteenth century and continued into the eighteenth. Its inhabitants were highly original, individual thinkers and writers. Yet as Grafton shows, they were all formed, in some way, by the very groups and disciplines that they set out to build.
In our noisy, caffeinated world it has never been more challenging to be a scholar. When many of our fellow citizens seem to have forgotten why we collect books in the buildings we call libraries, Grafton’s engaging, erudite essays could be a rallying cry for the revival of the liberal arts.
Now that's reads very appealing.
And then there's this bit, again, from the Wall Street Journal review:
In "The Public Intellectual and the Private Sphere," Mr. Grafton
evokes the intense reaction that Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" provoked among Jewish intellectuals when it began appearing in 1963. He even revisits his own family table. Samuel Grafton, the author's father and a respected journalist, tried to interview Arendt for Look magazine, sending her pages of hard questions. Arendt refused
to meet with him.
Mr. Grafton reconstructs this episode through his father's letters and notes -- the article was written but never published -- and his own recollections. Mr. Grafton is fair to Arendt, perhaps too fair, acknowledging her formidable intellect while attempting to set her outraged attacks on the Judenrat -- the Jewish councils compelled by the Nazis to assist in selections for death-camp transports -- in some sort of nuanced context. Strangely, he fails to mention her postwar, behind-the-scenes efforts on behalf of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, an unrepentant Nazi who had once been her lover. Arendt's arrogance comes through in his essay but not her duplicity.
Oh, my. We like that last line, don't we?
Okay, let's put this book on our list.
