'He Relishes Playing With Ideas'

What do we mean when we say a person has “an interesting mind”? It’s not the same as saying he or she is intelligent or has a head stuffed with facts (“data,” in more fashionable parlance), though neither quality is incompatible with possessing an interesting mind. Nor is such a sensibility necessarily linked to eloquence (count the articulate bores in your life), though it doesn’t hurt. A sense of humor is probably essential, coupled with an appreciation of human absurdity, limberness of thought and a gift for “an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars,” to cite Aristotle’s definition of genius. 

Perhaps it’s useful to understand what it means to have an interesting mind by describing its opposite – for example, Noam Chomsky's. Always fatal to a mind being interesting is self-seriousness, along with anger, bossiness, condescension, pretension and the conviction that one has all the answers. The least interesting thing we can know about anyone is a catalog of his opinions, though opinion is increasingly a substitute for thought. Extreme, provocative, attention-getting ideas are not interesting, but neither are passivity and a dire need to say things solely to please others. My model of a charmingly interesting mind is outlined by Victor Brombert in “Lessons of Montaigne”:

 

“[H]e surprises his reader by his provocative openness of mind and limitless curiosity. At the opening of one of his most celebrated essays, ‘Of experience,’ he remarks that there is nothing more natural than the desire for knowledge. Montaigne’s desire is, however, not satisfied by mere facts and affirmed certitudes. He relishes playing with ideas and delights in unsettling his reader and himself by challenging commonly held moral and intellectual convictions. His tolerance for views opposed to his own helps him revise his opinions.”

 

Brombert is ninety-eight years old.

 

[See also David Mason’s “The Freedom of Montaigne.”]