intellectualism
nounEtymology From intellectual + -ism.
1
The use or development of the intellect.
- I don't think much of you yet — I wish I could — though you do go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and Heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the working classes.1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days:
2
Human sciences, Philosophy, Sciences The doctrine that knowledge is derived from pure reason.
3
Human sciences, Sciences, Social science, Sociology The use of mental attributes as a criterion or value.
- Synonyms
- rationalism
- Derived terms
- anti-intellectualism, nonintellectualism, pseudointellectualism
- Related terms
- intellectualist