Help, please, froggies!

[Pianorak]

' Could a dog have an idea that behind every kitchen door lurks a feeding bowl....based on its life experience?

The nose would have given it that idea - no life experience needed.

[ardcarp]

O woe. I have been misconstrued. Dog encounters new kitchen door with no aromatic goodies behind it...but expects to find din-dins.
However, your nose-related scenario still involves an 'idae' which goes to show how the word can be used at a most basic level, as opposed to (for instance) Fred Hoyle's notion of a steady state theory (aka an idea).

[jayne lee wilson]

A literal translation might read: an intellectual is someone whose mind can go away from itself.
Hence the free version: an intellectual is someone who can think beyond the purely subjective.

Camus had a wonderfully concise, clear prose style and I don't think one should look too far from those surface meanings into any concept of "turn in on" or "looking into".
Nor need one attempt a difficult, not to say impossible, separation of ideas and feelings; Eliot's close association of both is quite deliberate. If you imagine you can think in a purely conceptual or emotionless "intellectual" realm, your ideas may be energised or coloured by unacknowledged feelings from below, from the unconscious. Or you may rationalise feelings and perceptions into a self-deceived vision of "the one true idea". Hence ideology. D'you think the tabloid brexiteers exhibit an emotional self-awareness...know their own motivations?

"Between the idea
And the reality
Falls the shadow"

That's just one of the points of Art really - to try to bring them together, in plain sight. Human honesty. Which leads us back to Camus' ton neutre...

Animals? Animals think in pictures, in-spired by smells....

[french frank]

A literal translation might read: an intellectual is someone whose mind can go away from itself.
Hence the free version: an intellectual is someone who can think beyond the purely [I]subjective.

I would still argue with that: there's no expression of ability or possibility in that quotation. The intellectual is someone who thinks beyond the (purely) subjective. Someone whose mind is detached from the subjective.

And whatever Eliot meant or said, feelings must be out, because they are individual to the self. Once you are influenced by your own feelings you must be subjective: the mind functions outside the self.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"An intellectual is someone with a detachable brain"?

[Pianorak]

Dog encounters new kitchen door with no aromatic goodies behind it...but expects to find din-dins.
However, your nose-related scenario still involves an 'idae' which goes to show how the word can be used at a most basic level

Oops. Sorry I have misconstrued you. Assuming the kitchen door and kitchen to be sense-neutral I doubt a dog would expect to find din-dins -although I can picture his sense of disappointment!

Animals? Animals think in pictures, in-spired by smells...

[Alain Maréchal]

"An intellectual is someone with a detachable brain"?

"an intellectual is someone who can hear the overture to William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger"

sorry! (I did advise I was no intellectual).

[Serial_Apologist]

Nor need one attempt a difficult, not to say impossible, separation of ideas and feelings; Eliot's close association of both is quite deliberate. If you imagine you can think in a purely conceptual or emotionless "intellectual" realm, your ideas may be energised or coloured by unacknowledged feelings from below, from the unconscious. Or you may rationalise feelings and perceptions into a self-deceived vision of "the one true idea". Hence ideology. D'you think the tabloid brexiteers exhibit an emotional self-awareness...know their own motivations?

"Between the idea
And the reality
Falls the shadow"

Not often I find myself in total agreement with you Jayne, but you've precisely voiced my thinking. And why separate feelings from insights? The response times may be slightly longer, but one feels as quickly in response to any stimulus as one does when accidentally touching a hot iron: ideas formulated in the structure of grammar and syntax, are the elaboration of response the brain has evolved as a capacity to understand and communicate through language, which is one of the codes making up a culture; yet such a response enactment has to take a pathway more laborious than the body in its unobstructed way of operating - a facet of interpretive reaction John Cage in Silence described as "cautiously proceeding in dualistic terms", contrasting our Western suspicion towards the body with the Eastern trust in its workings as manfested in "correct action"! And this is not (pace FF) a question, either, of whose thoughts/feelings - we all share them in varieties of recognisable communicable ways, subject to the eliciting and encouragement of understanding, which again is part-intellectualised, part intuited.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"an intellectual is someone who can hear the overture to William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger"

I'm terribly sorry ... what is "the Lone Ranger"?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... and this "William Tell" Overture ... is it in one of the "English Suites"?

[Alain Maréchal]

... and this "William Tell" Overture ... is it in one of the "English Suites"?

No, it is a compilation of folksongs from Essex, one of which begins

William, tell me what to do...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[french frank]

And why separate feelings from insights?

No reason - but it's not about 'insights' any more than about 'ideas'. It's what someone - in this particular case Camus - defines as 'an intellectual'. You may wish to provide an alternative definition which incorporates personal feelings/emotions in adding 'insights' to thoughts. But that doesn't seem to be in any way distinctive of anyone's thoughts, ideas or insights. Or, 'no such thing as an intellectual'.

And this is not (pace FF) a question, either, of whose thoughts/feelings - we all share them in varieties of recognisable communicable ways, subject to the eliciting and encouragement of understanding, which again is part-intellectualised, part intuited.

Don't understand what you're saying here: we don't all respond with the same feelings to the same 'stimuli' - unless you are merely thinking of stimuli in terms of hot irons.

[Serial_Apologist]

Don't understand what you're saying here: we don't all respond with the same feelings to the same 'stimuli' - unless you are merely thinking of stimuli in terms of hot irons.

I did not say we "all" respond to response stimuli with the "same feelings", but that we all do respond with feelings to stimuli, including to ideas, which seem to be the sole province of your neo-Platonic quest to establish a definition of an intellectual.

[french frank]

but that we all do respond with feelings to stimuli, including to ideas, which seem to be the sole province of your neo-Platonic quest to establish a definition of an intellectual.

Well, I was originally angling for a debate about what Camus meant by the phrase: "quelqu'un dont le cerveau s'absente lui-même" vis-à-vis the common translation "someone whose mind watches itself".

I don't know what you would mean by 'feelings' about, for instance, the expression of an opinion or a statement. Feelings of liking? disliking? agreeing? disgreeing? judgemental feelings? hostile/friendly feelings towards the person who made the statement? Is any response to a stimulus a 'feeling'? I don't find a definition which isn't connected with the physical or emotional.

I don't think Camus could have meant 'an intellectual' in the simple dictionary definition "(a) a highly intelligent person who pursues academic interests; (b) a person who cultivates the mind or mental powers and pursues learning and cultural interests". Isn't he trying to describe a distinctive way in which a person's mind works?