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On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All

Name: On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All
Brand: Princeton University Press
SKU: 9780691257563
Price: 32.99 USD
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Contributors:

Arnoud S. Q. Visser

Publisher:

Princeton University Press

Binding:

Hardcover

Book Category:

Philosophy, History

Book Subcategory:

Epistemology

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Release Date:

11/4/2025

ISBN 13:

9780691257563

Weight:

1.1 lbs

Size:

8.50 x 5.70 x 1.30 inches

Pages:

344

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product description

Description

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice

Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient truths. On Pedantry offers an altogether different perspective, revealing how the excessive use of learning has been a vice in Western culture since the days of Socrates.

Taking readers from the academies of ancient Greece to today's culture wars, Arnoud Visser explains why pretentious and punctilious learning has always annoyed us, painting vibrant portraits of some of the most intensely irritating intellectuals ever known, from devious sophists and bossy savantes to hypercritical theologians, dry-as-dust antiquarians, and know-it-all professors. He shows how criticisms of pedantry have typically been more about conduct than ideas, and he demonstrates how pedantry served as a weapon in the perennial struggle over ideas, social status, political authority, and belief. Shifting attention away from the self-proclaimed virtues of the learned to their less-than-flattering vice, Visser makes a bold and provocative contribution to the history of Western thought.

Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from satire and comedy to essays, sermons, and film, On Pedantry sheds critical light on why anti-intellectual views have gained renewed prominence today and serves as essential reading in an age of rising populism across the globe.

About the Author
Arnoud S. Q. Visser is professor of textual culture in the Renaissance at Utrecht University and director of the Huizinga Institute, the Dutch national research school for cultural history. His books include A Cultural History of Fame in the Renaissance, Reading Augustine in the Reformation, and Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image.

On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All

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