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> Thiel has drawn upon his wide-ranging and idiosyncratic readings in philosophy, history, economics, anthropology, and culture to become perhaps America’s lead

> Thiel has drawn upon his wide-ranging and idiosyncratic readings in philosophy, history, economics, anthropology, and culture to become perhaps America’s leading public intellectual today, assuming a mantle once held by the likes of Thorstein Veblen or Norman Mailer. That's a laughably preposterous characterization. Leading public intellectual? Comparison to Veblen, author of "The Theory of the Leisure Class", a scathing critique of the wealthy?

ForHackernews 12y ago
Perhaps relevant: http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/ http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/
pbreit 12y ago
The comparison has nothing to do with agreement.
- _delirium 12y ago
  That's true, but I find it difficult to understand where it's coming from purely descriptively as well. I think Peter Thiel is a well-known venture capitalist who is associated by the general public with Silicon Valley, but I would be very surprised if a significant fraction of the public thinks of him as a "public intellectual". If anything, I think he is often thought of (mistakenly) as mainly a technologist. I've frequently seen him referred to with the assumption that he has an Andreessen or Graham or Musk type background: a programmer/dev who got rich in the first dot-com boom, and then invested his tech winnings. It seems to be less well known that Thiel made his fortune in finance, before entering tech investment, and isn't a techie at all. If you were to ask people who they think of as America's leading public intellectual, some people who I think would come out ahead (on the basis of quite different audiences): Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, Richard Posner, Paul Krugman, Jared Diamond, Clay Shirky, David Graeber, Francis Fukuyama, Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc.
  - stephencanon 12y ago
    Spot on. Even as a techie who lived in the Bay Area for a decade, I've never thought of Thiel as a public intellectual.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
jfb 12y ago
The idea of a public intellectual is troublematic enough without grouping a banking goon like Thiel in with, e.g. Susan Sontag or Hannah Arendt. This is navel-gazing back-patting horseshit of the first water.

ForHackernews 12y ago

Perhaps relevant: http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/ http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/

pbreit 12y ago

The comparison has nothing to do with agreement.

_delirium 12y ago
That's true, but I find it difficult to understand where it's coming from purely descriptively as well. I think Peter Thiel is a well-known venture capitalist who is associated by the general public with Silicon Valley, but I would be very surprised if a significant fraction of the public thinks of him as a "public intellectual". If anything, I think he is often thought of (mistakenly) as mainly a technologist. I've frequently seen him referred to with the assumption that he has an Andreessen or Graham or Musk type background: a programmer/dev who got rich in the first dot-com boom, and then invested his tech winnings. It seems to be less well known that Thiel made his fortune in finance, before entering tech investment, and isn't a techie at all. If you were to ask people who they think of as America's leading public intellectual, some people who I think would come out ahead (on the basis of quite different audiences): Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, Richard Posner, Paul Krugman, Jared Diamond, Clay Shirky, David Graeber, Francis Fukuyama, Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc.
- stephencanon 12y ago
  Spot on. Even as a techie who lived in the Bay Area for a decade, I've never thought of Thiel as a public intellectual.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

jfb 12y ago

The idea of a public intellectual is troublematic enough without grouping a banking goon like Thiel in with, e.g. Susan Sontag or Hannah Arendt. This is navel-gazing back-patting horseshit of the first water.