Some aspects of the definition of the term "intelligent person"

In search of an answer to the question of who such an intelligent person is, do not be like Vasisualia Lokhankin, the hero of the famous novel created by a duet of Soviet classics. The novel says that he never served, because the work would make it difficult for him to think about the true purpose of the Russian intelligentsia. To this stratum of society, the nightly "gourmet" - a lover of borscht soup and cutlets - referred to himself.

What does it mean to be an intelligent person? Each period of development of society formulated its definition of this concept. The outstanding Russian scientist and intelligent man Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich in his letter, published in 1993 in the New World, wrote that an intellectual should have intellectual freedom as the main moral category limited only by his conscience and thought.

If you look into history, then for the second half of the XIX century, an intelligent person is a simple raznochinets, that he got an education and tried to get out into people only at the expense of his abilities and his desire for science, for knowledge. Its very origin implied struggle, both with social inequality, and with class. Representatives of such intellectuals were the intellectual idols of the youth of the 1860's - Pisarev, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov.

In addition to the "raznochinsky", at the same time appeared an intelligent man of the "Chekhovian" type, who aspired to reorganize the moral rather than the political one. Representatives of this group created art works that sowed reasonable and good, opened schools and hospitals for the poor, taught peasant children. Striking correspondence to this type is found in the character of the hero of the famous work of Flaubert - the discerning doctor Larivier, despised rank and showing generosity and hospitality towards poor patients. This and other similar images prove the interethnic nature of this type of intellectual, somewhat diluting the often-mentioned Russian monopoly.

Prior to the revolution, the writer Leonid Andreev , Maxim Gorky's friend, defined the intelligent person as such, who could not tolerate humiliation from "the powerful of this world," possessed a debilitating sharp conscience, and, however drunk, was still cultured and educated.

An intelligent person with the above set of qualities was never easy to live. But after the proclamation of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the Soviet government, he generally had to survive. According to the definition of the outstanding Soviet leader Lunacharsky, in order to realize himself as a true intellectual, three university diplomas are required: the first is the grandfather's, the second is the father's, and the third is his own. However, the presence in the family of three documents on education guarantees nothing - neither the developed intellect, nor the presence of external and internal culture. The definition is also inadequate for the reason that it is unlikely that after such revolutionary shootings, emigration waves, repression, exile, and the Gulag, even such formally intelligent families remained in Soviet Russia. But this place was vacant for a short while, a Soviet intellectual was simply appointed someone who professionally engaged not in physical but in mental work.

Of course, there were still some educated and cultured people here in the country who did not put up with the authorities and cherished high feelings in their souls. His prototypes are often found on the pages of works by Fedin, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Zoshchenko and others, but among the victorious ham, such people were doomed to extinction.

True, the twentieth century (in its second half) showed the world worthy and intelligent of its representatives, grown up by a dissident and literary artistic bohemian environment. All of them passed the path of spiritual transformation, based on internal freedom and the best domestic samples of literature, music and painting of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet period.

Of course, the definitions given in this article are not exhaustive. Search, inquisitive readers, using their intellectual freedom and guided by thought and conscience.