Many say: “Erudition is very important!” But they don’t really understand what phenomenon is behind this concept. Let's figure it out today.
The width and depth of erudition
As always, we start with the definition. And here everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Because erudition can mean both broad, but not deep knowledge, and deep education, when a person understands the subject comprehensively. The meaning of the word “erudition”, like any other, depends on the context. Yes, it is important to remember that the depth of any knowledge is relative.
Education and erudition: correlation of concepts
An educated person may be erudite, but education does not always imply a wide and deep erudition. For example, there is a design engineer, and he knows everything about his work, but is almost not interested in anything except her, because the rest of the world has nothing to do with him. Who can say that a design engineer is a dark and uneducated person? No one. However, it can hardly be called a scholar.
So what is erudition? This is a wide knowledge of different fields of knowledge. As we already understood, erudition can be deep and shallow. The main feature is that it is acquired by a person independently, through self-education, i.e. reading books. Erudition and well-read are almost synonymous.
If we leave aside writing people (writers, journalists, and philologists), for whom book education serves as a necessary tool for work, then in other cases scholar is an ascetic of non-utilitarian knowledge, which, perhaps, he does not need at all in everyday activities. Reading books and automatically typed erudition is only a way to dilute the prose of life.
Rounding off the topic of education and erudition, it must be said: a person with education is not always erudite, but erudite is always an educated person.
Joseph Brodsky as an example of fantastic erudition
The Nobel laureate in literature is, of course, suitable for illustration in this case.
Joseph Alexandrovich did not receive any higher education, he left school in the 9th grade. Since then, he was engaged exclusively in self-education. But if you take the trouble and read the book “Dialogues with Joseph Brodsky” by Solomon Volkov, you can see that Brodsky’s erudition is vast and deep. True, it mainly concerns literature, the Russian language, philosophy - humanitarian disciplines. He is not an encyclopedist, as one might think. Yes, and now there is so much knowledge that in one particular area you can drown in the information sea. In other words, the question of whether erudition is what it is, can be answered metaphorically: "This is Joseph Brodsky." But each has its own heroes and examples. Now let's look at the problem from a practical point of view.
How to increase erudition?
It is impossible to become well-read specially, but the main thing here is to start. Nurture at least one fiery passion in the soul. Everyone can have her own. The examples here are pointless. The main thing is to be interested in something with all my heart. Impatient readers will ask: “Is it possible to increase erudition?” The answer is yes. But only if a person loves knowledge disinterestedly, and not in order to achieve extraneous goals.
For example, a teenager wants to please girls, therefore, with nauseating scrupulousness, studies the immortal creations of Paulo Coelho to talk about something with the young ladies, or rather, to start a conversation, of course, laid-back. It is unlikely that something will come of such erudition. Because a person is not obsessed with a passion for knowledge.
So, erudition stands on three pillars:
- Love for development.
- Love of reading.
- Love for knowledge without any purpose.
The last paragraph needs clarification. If cognition has a definite goal, then sooner or later it will exhaust itself, and erudite is a person who absorbs knowledge for pleasure. Erudition is a kind of intellectual hedonism. The last fact is important to remember.