Academia is in an unprecedented crisis. Its relevance and function in the world are threatened by AI, disinformation, and public audiences’ willingness to subscribe to ideology rather than science. The survival of academics is threatened by budget cuts, the increasing number of PhD graduates, and the proportionally decreasing number of open positions. Its structural stability is threatened by bad governance and disorientation within specific disciplines. Its output is threatened by the growing influence of neoliberal, capitalist logic on research and publication. There are different reasons to be pessimistic and feel at loss as an academic.

But even more seriously, and in addition to these threats coming from outside, there is a dynamic within academia that does not only exacerbate these external problems but also gnaw at the substance of academic work from the inside.

In the twenty-first century academics in certain disciplines have started to oppose intellectual endeavors as such. They seem to be upset and frustrated with the existential depth that academic work had until recently and with the ultimate questions that it pursued—and they want scholarship to become reflective of ordinary, everyday experience, rather than to maintain itself as a critical cool to push beyond the boundaries of that experience. These academics have become anti-intellectualists.

I want to specify what I mean by “anti-intellectualism” with two examples: ancient philosophy and religious studies.

In these disciplines one can choose between two approaches. In ancient philosophy, one can commit to the immanent existential interests and goals of ancient philosophers and theorize on these goals in a historicist way, so as to understand the history of ancient philosophy better, all while making the endeavor of ancient philosophers fruitful for our time. Under this perspective one could ask: What did Plato think about ultimate reality and the relation to ultimate reality that one should cultivate in one’s life? Or: What did Plotinus understand to be the finality of contemplation, and is this finality compatible with worldviews that do not proceed under the same metaphysical assumptions? Or: What did Aristotle conceive as “first substance”?

Another approach is to disconnect from the immanent interests of ancient philosophers and to either critique their implicit assumptions, or to analyze the epiphenomenal factors by which those interests are surrounded, but that do not have the same existential bearing. For example, one could say: Plato did not really mean to pose any kind of ultimate reality, and we are mistaken about his views because certain metaphysical and religious traditions have distorted Plato’s image. Or: Aristotle not only philosophized about existential questions but also had opinions on adjacent topics, such as meteorology, animals, and ecology. Or: ancient philosophers didn’t simply speculate from nothing but practiced philosophy in specific social and economic contexts; and these are the elements scholars should focus on.

Comparing contemporary scholarship to nineteenth-century scholarship on ancient philosophy, one cannot but notice a set of underlying assumptions, a “vibe” that pervades contemporary academic writing and that seems so firmly rooted in academic discourse that one couldn’t even meaningfully contradict it: Embodied reality is more real than any supposedly spiritual or transcendent reality; the principle of plurality is immanently valuable and the principle of unity is an ideological construction; experience is a more fundamental point of reference than concepts and ideas; any commitment to invisible realities must be seen critically and cannot be considered as a genuine philosophical standpoint; following the immanent dynamics of any given metaphysical system is imprudent, and one should rather seek to understand what the material and historical conditions of that system are; the great traditions of ancient philosophy, Platonism and Aristotelianism, have been overemphasized and monopolized by scholars and Stoic, medical, physiological, and psychological current have been cast aside.

Similarly, in Religious Studies, any interest in the rationality of religious truth claims, in the fundamental concepts with which religion operates (religion itself, contemplation, meditation, God, etc.), or in the theory underpinning practice raises suspicions: one could easily lapse into Western vocabulary or essentialism, depart from the reality of lived religion, or simply do something that isn’t interesting to the majority of scholars and practitioners. Rather than theorizing, scholars should look at lived practice through the lens of sociology of religion, ethnography, anthropology, and other empirical methodologies. Any attempt to analyze a given religion through the theoretical categories of cosmology, theology, and psychology, would run the risk of intellectualizing something that simply isn’t intellectual and thereby project problematic assumptions onto an object that should be studied more neutrally.

One is left to wonder: Why did existential commitment and metaphysical speculation become suspect to scholars of philosophy and religious studies? Why must one treat ultimate reality, absolute truth, and the quest for the ground of all reality ironically? Even if these notions are conditioned by cultural assumptions, why should one refrain from translating them into other systems and examine their immanent rationality?

Anti-intellectualist academics could object that these questions result from personal impressions rather than from reality. I am ready to admit that judging by vibes is dangerous and reflects frustrations and emotions more than reality. But looking at the dynamics of academic recruitment, of monograph and paper publications, and of the inclination of research council committees across Europe, the UK, and the US, it seems undeniable to me that there is an etiquette, and that a breach of that etiquette would be seen as an offense to the very standards and function of academic research. Experience, social reality, embodied states come first; theory, speculation, concepts come second, as mere expressions or vocalizations of those more fundamental realities.

Academics have become anti-intellectualists insofar as they aren’t ready to admit that intelligence can shape the more immediate dimensions of life. In ancient philosophy and religious studies in particular, they pretend that past generations of scholars have maintained the illusion of “ultimate questions” at the expense of real life. Those scholars gave in to the temptation of affirming spiritual realities without acknowledging the richness of material life, like ascetics incapable of admitting their vital instincts, preferring to take refuge in conceptualizations and empty abstractions. But now the time has come to dismiss these conceptualizations and return to the reality of life and to the globalized dimension of academic inquiry. We may now sarcastically dismiss questions about ultimate reality, eternity, God, because those questions do not conform to the globalized, meta-cultural, and post-metaphysical standards of our time.

Departments aren’t only threatened by political and cultural pressure. They are also threatened by the latent anti-intellectualism of faculty and researchers who have decided—perhaps as a result of frustration, misanthropy, disorientation, or unhappiness—that the fundamental questions of human existence aren’t worthwhile. They unhesitatingly proclaim: “we don’t do that here,” “I’m not interested in that,” “these questions are anachronistic.” And yet, the questions that they reject are the very questions that societies raise, and that academia must responsibly discuss.

By ironizing those questions, academics ridicule their vocation and contribute to eroding their role in the world. There is no justification for such irony. Universities, faculties, departments shouldn’t give in to the temptation of anti-intellectualism, lest societies begin looking for fundamental answers in ideology and reject critical thought.