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Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible. Alternatively, self-described intellectuals who are alleged to fail to adhere to rigorous standards of scholarship may be described as anti-intellectuals although pseudo-intellectualism is a more commonly, and perhaps more accurately, used description for this phenomenon. In public discourse, anti-intellectuals are usually perceived and publicly present themselves as champions of the common folk—populists against political elitism and academic elitism—proposing that the educated are a social class detached from the everyday concerns of the majority, and that they dominate political discourse and higher education. Because "anti-intellectual" can be pejorative, defining specific cases of anti-intellectualism can be troublesome; one can object to specific facets of intellectualism or the application thereof without being dismissive of intellectual pursuits in general. Moreover, allegations of anti-intellectualism can constitute an appeal to authority or an appeal to ridicule that attempts to discredit an opponent rather than specifically addressing his or her arguments.〔"It is all too easy for people with more formal schooling to believe they know better than those directly involved (a particular problem )," Sowell, 2001.〕 Anti-intellectualism is a common facet of totalitarian dictatorships to oppress political dissent. Perhaps its most extreme political form was during the 1970s in Cambodia under the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, when people were killed for being academics or even for merely wearing eyeglasses (as it suggested literacy) in the Killing Fields.〔(【引用サイトリンク】archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20120422004018/http://www.woroni.com.au/articles/features/trial-khmer-rogue )〕 During the Spanish Civil War and the following dictatorship, General Francisco Franco's civilian repression, the White Terror campaign, killed an estimated 200,000 civilians, targeting heavily writers, artists, teachers and professors. ==Distrust of intellectuals== Economist Thomas Sowell argues for distinctions between unreasonable and reasonable wariness of intellectuals. Defining intellectuals as "people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas" as distinct from those who apply ideas practically, Sowell argues that there can be good cause for distrust of intellectuals. When working in their fields of expertise, intellectuals have increased knowledge. However, when compared to other careers, Sowell suggests intellectuals have few disincentives for speaking outside their expertise, and are less likely to face the consequences of their errors. For example, a physician is judged by effective treatment, yet might face malpractice lawsuits if he harms a patient. In contrast, a university professor with tenure is less likely to be judged by the effectiveness of his ideas and less likely to face repercussions for his errors: By encouraging, or even requiring, students to take stands where they have neither the knowledge nor the intellectual training to seriously examine complex issues, teachers promote the expression of unsubstantiated opinions, the venting of uninformed emotions, and the habit of acting on those opinions and emotions, while ignoring or dismissing opposing views, without having either the intellectual equipment or the personal experience to weigh one view against another in any serious way. Sowell discusses intellectual influence, labeling schoolteachers as what he calls "intelligentsia" who recruit children, beginning in elementary school, to advocate for or against issues as part of "community service" projects, which will later assist them in the college application process. In this manner, intellectuals participate in other areas where they may possess no prior knowledge at all in order to influence public policy issues. The author argues that as a result, they encourage their students to formulate opinions "without any intellectual training or prior knowledge of those issues, making constraints against falsity few or non-existent."〔Sowell (2009), p. 296.〕 Similar arguments have been made by others. Historian Paul Johnson argued that a close examination of 20th-century history reveals that intellectuals have championed innumerable disastrous public policies, writing, "beware intellectuals. Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice." Journalist Tom Wolfe〔Wolfe, Tom. (2000). "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists," ''Harper's Monthly'', June 2000.〕 described an intellectual as "a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others." Such views form the basis of an episode of the American animation series ''The Simpsons'', "They Saved Lisa's Brain", in which one of the protagonists joins the local branch of Mensa that through a bizarre series of events, subsequently finds itself in complete charge of the local town of Springfield. Considering themselves to be intellectually superior to the rest of the townsfolk, they high-handedly implement a series of ostensibly logical but socially disruptive public policies that antagonize the rest of the town, with disastrous consequences, and are eventually rebuked by Stephen Hawking who appeared as himself. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Anti-intellectualism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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