I see an intellectual as someone who explicitly places his or her writing and argumentation in dialog with a tradition (meaning: sequence) of other intellectuals who have written on the topics s/he is engaged with — references, in short
Or you aim to be a particular sort of intellectual who seeks that kind of validation and comparative evaluation against others. I think it can simply be a way of living like mysticism. Just as mystics exist in both monastically embodied traditions and as wild solitary hermits.
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Then it sounds a lot like what others have tried to describe as a Cynical tradition. Which is distinct from the “tender, quiet freemasonry of useless erudition” or whatever.
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That does capture part of what I'm getting at here. So for example, as a former institutional academic guy who is now a blogger, I'm still in a "tradition" in Nils' sense, but it is a weaker one, and to the extent I'm intellectual at all, I'm closer to a Crusoe-on-Island one
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