Philosophy Professor Left Academia for Monastery to Rediscover True Intellectual Life
"I left. I joined to quit the profession entirely and lived in a monastery, a Catholic religious community for three years. When I was there, I really tried to encounter myself as a human being, not just a professor, not someone with a certain social status."
About this episode
Philosopher Zena Hitz, professor at St. John's College and author of 'Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasure of an Intellectual Life,' reveals her journey from elite academia to a Catholic monastery and back, arguing that genuine intellectual life belongs to everyone, not just credentialed professionals. Hitz experienced early career success in philosophy and classics at prestigious institutions before becoming disillusioned in her 30s and spending three years in a religious community doing manual labor, where she rediscovered intellectual life as a fundamental human practice rather than a professional achievement. She documents the ongoing collapse of humanities education in American universities, with declining majors and department closures driven by pressure on students to pursue lucrative careers. Hitz observes that today's young people show heightened fear of uncertainty compared to previous generations, attributing this to relentless achievement culture and the internet's transformation of learning into information retrieval. She champions historical examples of working-class intellectual movements in 19th and 20th century Britain and America, where laborers formed reading groups to study Plato, Aristotle, and other serious works. Contemporary examples include office worker John Baker, who spent ten years tracking peregrine falcons by bicycle and wrote an acclaimed literary study, and rapper MC Hammer, who posts scientific journal articles about consciousness and the nature of life. Hitz argues that manual labor provides essential contact with reality's resistance, while pure mental work risks detachment from truth. She advocates for grassroots intellectual communities organized informally, suggesting that authentic intellectual life requires withdrawal from social competition and status hierarchies. The crisis in professional academia, she contends, may ultimately benefit intellectual life by forcing its return to ordinary people pursuing understanding for its own sake rather than career advancement.
Key takeaways
- Zena Hitz abandoned a successful academic career in her 30s to live in a Catholic monastery for three years, seeking to understand intellectual life beyond professional status.
- The humanities are collapsing in American universities with declining enrollment and department closures as students face pressure to choose lucrative career paths over fields like philosophy and literature.
- Today's students display greater fear of uncertainty and not knowing answers than previous generations, driven by achievement culture and internet-based information retrieval replacing genuine learning processes.
- MC Hammer regularly posts scientific journal articles on Twitter and has developed serious self-directed study of consciousness and the nature of life, exemplifying intellectual engagement outside academia.
- Historical working-class intellectual movements in Britain and America saw laborers form reading groups to study Plato, Aristotle, and serious classics in their spare time.
- Manual labor provides essential contact with reality's resistance that pure intellectual work lacks, helping prevent the detachment from truth that gives intellectuals a bad reputation.
- Authentic intellectual life requires withdrawal from social competition and status hierarchies, existing in activities pursued for their own sake rather than as means to career advancement or social standing.