/lit/ - Literature

>>20027183
I agree about the gatekeeping thing. It's a huge problem because it actually prevents philosophy/literature from being more popular with the public, and they're trained to see it as useless.

I would argue that golden age Athens is the ideal intellectual climate, because you have tons of young men paying Sophists just to teach them rhetorical techniques and knowledge. And stoicism was huge in Rome too. Both of these are philosophical, yet neither relied on the university structure. And when there were universities, it was "This is how our system of thought works", NOT "Here's a history of all systems of thought. Choose one to specialize in and have fun, lol!"

So now we have modern sophists like Jordan Peterson catering to the masses while the real intellectuals are stuck in ivory towers circlejerking one another and intellectual discussion cannot happen in the mainstream. We will not ever have another Rome where Horace and Cicero stand alongside Caesar, because real intellectualism is dead, and universities probably killed it.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe universities aren't the problem. But if not, I want a good answer for what is.