Embodying Intellectual Virtue in a Virtual World

“For an intellectual,” wrote A. G. Sertillanges in 1921, “care of the body, which is the instrument of

the soul, is virtue and wisdom.” Over one hundred years later, the iron formulas of machines tempt

us with failsafe shortcuts around the hidden byways of thinking. LLMs such as ChatGPT have

reduced the agile art of knowledge to the computational and transactional model of “inputs” and

“outputs.” We will confront today’s technological challenges to intellectual virtue, discussing the

French Dominican’s much-admired book The Intellectual Life, in which the integration of soul and