Yves here. We hope that students will appreciate the change from our regular programs. I suspect that most of you have always wanted to go hiking. Those who are rigid or find it necessary to prove their views may be accused of walking the walk, or “not getting it,” as if it were something so obvious that it didn’t need to be explained.
I wish the author or Das would give examples of writing down. Perhaps readers can point something out.
I found a promising chapter, Persistence of the Learner, in The Vices of the Learned. For example:
That a pedestrian can still evoke such strong emotions may seem surprising. While other figures of intellectual evil, such as the scholarly charlatan or the mad scientist, have traditionally been surrounded by fame, scandal, and even fear, the pedestrian as a type has long been cast as a decided social misfit. Fatigue is a historically important factor in the representation of pedestrians, along with other negative factors such as fussiness, smallness, and hyperbole when applied to learning. However, these conflicting associations and responses make this number interesting. The pedant illuminates how a historical genre or example of academic misconduct can be used to represent a collection of bad deeds. The shifting emphasis on the representation of pedants and the combination of vices attributed to them provide interesting clues to explain why the genre has continued to meet demand.
Now for the main event.
By Satyajit Das, former banker and author of many derivative technical works and several general titles: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006 and 2010), Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011 and Anqunceet 6012 and Anqunces6012) 2021). His latest book, The Everything Bubble: A Guide to the New Age of Financial Speculation and Phantom Wealth,> will be released in 2027. He has also written on ecotourism – In Search of the Pangolin (2006) (with Jade Novakovic) and Wild Quests: Journeys into Ecotourism and the Future for Animals (2024). This is an extended version version of the clip published in the print edition of the New Indian Express
Writing or commenting on a hiking book is impossible without hiking! It doesn’t help that the author proudly says that at school he was proud of correcting his teachers and admits that in his youth he “talked badly” and did not understand this anger.
Around SQ Visser is a Dutch Professor of Renaissance literary tradition, a humanistic discipline this reviewer did not know but takes as a book about other books – an ouroboros of self-indulgence essential to burning scholarly credentials. On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-It-All (Princeton Press, 2025) it is intended to be a pedestrian history and critique, a vice of Western culture and, one suspects, a serious crime within the realms of higher education.
Professor Visser traces the origin of the word ‘pedant’ to ‘pedante’, a term given to private tutors usually of low social status who were hired to teach the children of the wealthy in Renaissance Italy. This old concept comes from ancient Greece with thinkers like the Sophists. The book, usefully short, is a chronological historical journey spanning 2,500 years. Part 1 covers the period leading up to the actual idea of walking in each session. Part 2 looks at early modern Europe and the Enlightenment. The last part looks at it in today’s context.
In Pedantry’s the central thesis, at least as your ontologically challenged and intellectually deficient author has been able to see, is that pretentiousness and exaggerated displays of learning have always been offensive. Professor Visser sees three patterns. First, “a collection of pedestrians and omniscients that can be traced for years transcends individual stories and creates a cultural script of intellectual misconduct”. Second, the pedestrian history “reveals…the outstanding contribution of the pedestrians themselves”. Third, walking involves the continued importance of good manners…Bad manners, improper appearance, and inappropriate behavior continue to mark the pedestrian”. When interpreted, it seems that the concept of the pedant is based on stereotypes, gender bias (“wrong behavior is a phenomenon written by men”), the lack of power of the man”), the conflict of the man” and the conflict of the waffead. in the issue of verbal violence on the pedestrian.
The title is misleading. In Pedantry deals with the treatment of anti-intellectualism. The main focus is the emergence of “cultural literature” against intellectuals, real and pretenders, through history. Harassment involves the perceived expression of this group in various ways such as rebellious or vain, shameless or hypocritical, masculine or toxic. There is nothing new about this, which is the main point that Professor Visser points out.
This book never conforms to the basic ideas, the constantly changing definitions and the explanations of the pedestrians and the intellectuals, both ideas are ambiguous. He makes wisdom like scholarship. This distorts the book, as if it started with Socrates, who was killed as a revolutionary thinker instead of a scholar.
The author flirts with the difference between reality and ideas. Correcting a factual error, even one of grammar or idiom, is not an approximation. Disagreement of opinion, especially in philosophical matters, reflects diversity of opinion. It is never easy to give a critical analysis of someone’s position. As the late politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed: “You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to your facts.” To an extent, people rejecting facts or avoiding argument based on their beliefs does not change the truth.
This ambiguity finds the writer in the same situation as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who in his concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964, introduced a famous line related to the discovery of “hard” pornography: “I know it when I see it.” The author fully accepts the judge’s approach: “I will not attempt today to further describe the kinds of things that I understand to be accepted in that brief definition; and perhaps I will never succeed in doing so in an intelligible way.” Professor Visser’s weakest argument is that pedestrian training is about qualifications. You are concerned about how much accuracy is overstated. But walking is contextual in nature and depends on groups: “I guide you, you walk!”
This book has a tone that is always annoying that pedantry is negative. He struggles to distinguish between the argument and the personal characteristics of the interlocutor, which is irrelevant. This book fails to make a coherent argument instead of being a social history of a person who is at the forefront of Western culture as a negative person or a social stereotype. In Pedantry it ends up as a set of negative tropes used against knowledge and logic over time. Professor Visser tries to relate this to basic social conditions and arguments but only succeeds in showing that poor accuracy, “annoying fault-finding” and “annoying attention to detail” are offensive to some. Reading this book, one sympathizes with the rational intellectuals who are misrepresented by anti-intellectuals or politicians who like themselves as pedestrians.
The book’s lack of a clear focal point does not help the style. Professor Visser wants to cater to a popular and academic audience which results in an unsatisfactory backlash. In Pedantry it ends up being a series of sometimes fun reversals and asides. It boils down to the usual trendy non-fiction formula. Set up a brief biography of someone, explain some of their thinking, add or remove criticism, distinguish it from another thinker, then rinse and repeat. Sometimes it feels like an annoyance with successive Wikipedia articles.
The attempt to enhance the general appeal of the book by using cultural examples, especially films, rarely seems to be true. Professor Visser’s use of Woody Allen’s 2015 An Unreasonable Man by a philosophy teacher you are curious. Your industrious writer had never heard of it and had to sit through 96 minutes of endless gentleness. His misreading of Simon Gray’s play Butley (Professor Visser refers to the film version starring Alan Bates as the central stranger) is another example. It’s about self-loathing and being tired of living and not walking. It has little to do with the decline of intellectual and cultural power.
The omission is especially surprising. Anonymous surfing and “mansplaining” are mentioned but never explored. The impact of new information technologies especially AI is not there. These recent events are more important than obscure cinematic works.
The book’s blurb makes intellectual claims. This obviously requires understanding Dutch humor and character more than the author does. Given the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and now the head of NATO Mark Rutte disrespectfully, shamelessly talking to his “father” US President Donald Trump, perhaps an acquired taste.
In Pedantry it is a missed opportunity to examine anti-intellectualism, now more prevalent than ever. During the Brexit negotiations, British politician Michael Gove dismissed economic concerns (which have been proven to be true) saying that “people in this country have had enough professionals”. Professor Visser correctly points out the American mistrust of scholars that caused the 19th The political party of the century, the Know Nothings. But it does not make the full link to today’s rejection of knowledge and acceptance of “alternative facts”. Tom Paine fought for “useful knowledge” on the grounds that “dictionary men” got it all wrong. The association of pedestrian cunning with royal oppression and religious rejection was to serve political purposes. Same with 21St century and can be found today in nativist “anti-woke” and “anti-elite” agendas and a general disregard for and fear of technology and information.
Anti-intellectualism is dangerous and destroys society. Under two Trump administrations, there have been attacks on research, universities, science, information (including environmental data), critical thinking, and the defunding of vaccines. The full cost will be revealed later. Professor Visser could have chosen historical precedents to show how history informs these modern developments.
Finally, In Pedantry he downplays his own arguments. While it is true that it is very difficult to judge the value, and integrity of an argument or thought, the academic tendency towards deliberate misunderstanding and technical jargon simply hides the meaning or lack of meaning of what is being said. A normal way of hurting often hides uncertainty and anxiety. The author concludes In Pedantry firmly asserting his authority saying that if the students do not find it convincing, “[their] the objection is completely understandable. But pedants will know better. “
Professor Visser quotes but ignores Michel de Montaigne’s criticism of education: “What shall we say? What judgments do we make? What do we do?”
© 2026 Satyajit Das All Rights Reserved
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