Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse

Kimball, a respected critic and managing editor of the New Criterion, applies the pornography standard to intelligence in this collection of essays about famous men and their smarts: it's hard to define, but he knows it when he sees it. ""Intelligence,"" Kimball writes, ""like fire, is a power that is neither good nor bad in itself but rather takes its virtue, its moral coloring, from its application."" Among the figures the author identifies as having constructively applied their intelligence are Plutarch (who taught us about character), Kierkegaard (""the supreme anatomist of the aesthetic mode of life""), Wittgenstein (for whom philosophy was an ""existential imperative"") and, of course, Descartes. (Apparently, real intelligence requires a Y chromosome). Kimball notes that in these studies the heroes ""rather outweigh the villains,"" but a little more abuse might have helped liven things up. The personal bits-Kimball's sickbed discovery of Wodehouse, or Trollope's account of his schoolyard woes-stand out brightly in essays that are earnest and rigorous, if occasionally a bit dry.