ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a worldly curiosity, in tacit opposition to political expression (“values”), to be the appropriate stance for the intellectual to take both to the world at large and to intellectual life as lived within the confines of the academy. Paraethnography is suggested as a way to acquire worldly wisdom from our fellow moderns. Perhaps ironically, this turn from the ought to the is might produce a more morally defensible politics. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
