, Columnist
Intellectuals Are Better Than Thought Leaders
How the thinkers make their money meets the complexities of reality.
The narrow path.
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The modern intellectual entered this world in the 1700s, sociologist Lewis A. Coser argued in his 1965 history, “Men of Ideas.”1494267456303 Salons in Paris and coffeehouses in London provided free-thinkers with places where they could discuss and debate -- and the growth of the reading public began to provide a few of them with a comfortable living not dependent on patrons or royal favor.
The English poet and polemicist Alexander Pope was one of the first to support himself in style through book sales, building a villa on the Thames outside London in 1720 with the proceeds from his translation of the “Iliad,” and writing: