The Best Way to Learn Outside of the Classroom
The author discusses the value of intellectual biographies as a tool for busy adults to engage with complex philosophical theories. It contrasts this approach with the structuralist view that an author's life is irrelevant to their work.
Why it matters
It offers a practical framework for lifelong learning and navigating dense academic subjects outside of formal classroom settings.
As a busy adult, I approach foundational, complicated ideas with the help of the intellectual biography.
Rae Russel / Getty August 7, 2026, 3:20 PM ET Share Save This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.
“How are you on theory ?” my editor asked me earlier this week. I knew what he was talking about—not my pet hypotheses about, say, the existence of cryptids, but rather a group of 20th-century French philosophers. Yet I didn’t know much else beyond that. I was familiar with Michel Foucault, partly from college coursework but largely from a popular meme that features his most famous concept, the panopticon . I know about Roland Barthes and the death of the author. I know that Derrida, Lacan, and Deleuze are names that I should know.
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