Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz
Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz
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Lost in Thought
The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

Author: Zena Hitz

Narrator: Emily Ellet

Unabridged: 7 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/29/2020

Synopsis

In an overloaded, superficial, technological world, in which almost everything and everybody is judged by its usefulness, where can we turn for escape, lasting pleasure, contemplation, or connection to others? While many forms of leisure meet these needs, Zena Hitz writes, few experiences are so fulfilling as the inner life, whether that of a bookworm, an amateur astronomer, a birdwatcher, or someone who takes a deep interest in one of countless other subjects. Drawing on inspiring examples, from Socrates and Augustine to Malcolm X and Elena Ferrante, and from films to Hitz's own experiences as someone who walked away from elite university life in search of greater fulfillment, Lost in Thought is a passionate and timely reminder that a rich life is a life rich in thought.

Today, when even the humanities are often defended only for their economic or political usefulness, Hitz says our intellectual lives are valuable not despite but because of their practical uselessness. And while anyone can have an intellectual life, she encourages academics in particular to get back in touch with the desire to learn for its own sake, and calls on universities to return to the person-to-person transmission of the habits of mind and heart that bring out the best in us.

About Zena Hitz

Zena Hitz is a tutor in the great books program at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she also lives. She has a PhD in ancient philosophy from Princeton University and studies and teaches across the liberal arts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Prerna on October 01, 2021

This is going to be one of those boring "I wanted to like this book, I was supposed to like this book, but..." reviews. The book begins well enough. Hitz recounts her own experience in academia - how her fascination for learning and its pursuit as an activity of leisure warped into another ugly step......more

Goodreads review by Sophia on June 12, 2020

There are some things to enjoy in this book, but I take issue with most of it, beginning with the elitist premise, the supposed necessary «uselessness» of living an «intellectual life». Poverty here always seems like a temporary state or something to be visited, only to return to one’s «proper place......more

Goodreads review by Atri on October 24, 2021

The love of learning has emerged as something profoundly serious, something that can change a life, a source of our highest aspirations - to know, to love, to flourish in our full humanity. *** The social use of intellectual life lies in its cultivation of broader and richer ways of being human, in sh......more

Goodreads review by Nelson on March 13, 2021

Memórias desencantadas sobre a academia, em que se procuram pistas para continuar a acreditar no valor da reflexão, da edificação da vida interior. A questão que move Zena Hitz em "Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life" (2020) é: para que serve uma vida intelectual? O que a l......more

Goodreads review by Michael on July 18, 2020

On one of my arms is a pair of tattoos, each depicting a labyrinth. At the center of one is a precious stone representing intellectual life and in the other is a flower representing the spiritual life. Separately there are several paths to the center symbolic of the many paths available to one pursu......more

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