Intellectuals of the Ancient World (part 1)

The paper raises a question, whether it is possible to use the concept of an “intellectual” in describing realities of the Ancient World. It considers understanding of wisdom in the premodern worldview and shows that wisdom has not only just epistemological and anthropological, but also the ontological significance for the owner of such a worldview. Wisdom was called the order and meaning of the universe that existed since the beginning of time. For a person with the pre-modern worldview, having wisdom meant to possess power over oneself, other people and the entire world around him. Therefore, only those people, who underwent a special rite of initiation into the sacraments in the archaic societies, were having a high social position. It is concluded that an intellectual being a special social type appears in those societies, where archaic unity in theoretical, practical and liturgical, divine activities is weakened.

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