The words "British" and "schizophrenia".

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"...British seems to me to be a rather meaningless term..."

Kate Fox, social anthropologist, in "Watching the English", 2004.

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"Add to this the fact that they are given a label like schizophrenia - which has no scientific meaning,..."

Richard Bentall, Professor of Experimental Clinical Psychology, Manchester University.
in "The Indepenedent" Tuesday 6th March 2007.

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The boot is on both feet!

Timothy Garton-Ash doesn't seem to cite any examples of French intellectual debates in his assertion of Anglo-American superiority made in an article in The Guardian.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/27/comment.mainsection)


How can we say we've got the best when we don't appreciate what we're supposedly superior to?
The term "British intellectual" which he employs is indeed problematic, if only because anyone with a modicum of intellect can tell you that the term "British" is quite devoid of any meaning.


So to answer the question, no there aren't any "British intellectuals" at all, Timsy Wimsy.


Whenever I hear the word "British" I feel a shudder down my spine. So that's quite often.

George Orwell called Jean-Paul Sartre "a bag of wind." Fair comment perhaps.
TGA seems very pleased with this assessment.

Perhaps we shouldn't forget that George Orwell also wrote that "...the English are not intellectual".

So the boot is on both feet.

Ultimately this latter is unfair comment I think. It is in the context of an analysis of England in the 40s; but I think that even today there is still perhaps a lack of respect for ideas in England.


The average English person is perhaps less intellectual than the average French person.
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P.S. 2008.
One of the reasons that Paris might in some ways be a cultural backwater as according to this article is because of Anglo-American cultural imperialism.
How would we know if Paris is an intellectual backwater when the only way that England looks is to America?


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P.S. 2009.


Sartre did a fine line in verbal dismissal himself.
I heard somewhere that he called A.J.Ayer "un con" - a cunt - though that's not so strong in French.
Ad hominem, but interesting nonetheless. :)



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In 2009, Sartre is a more important philosopher than, for example, Ayer, in my opinion.


Ayer's views are quite simple and can be summarised in a page or two.

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