The opposite of an intellectual may be someone who lacks creativity (a mundane) or may be someone who relates to the world with pragmatism. The opposite of a "pragmatist" may be someone who lacks any common sense (a naif) or may be an intellectual.
An intellectual is someone with a better-than-average creative intelligence who loves to relate to the world at large and to his/her hobbies predominantly through abstract reasoning, analytic logic, associative logic, the Scientific Perspective, imagination, and a sense of awe and wonder. Intellectuals love theory for itself rather than demanding concrete applications.
Intellectuals are often called geeks both by mundanes and by themselves. Intellectuals tend to love complex studies in literature and/or science and/or philosophy. The most common intellectual recreational interests include computers, SF, fantasy, computer games, RPGs, comic books, anime, and sub-titled foreign films. The interests of intellectuals, idealists, and artists often overlap.
In short, an intellectual is someone who actually cares about meaning, philosophy, symbolism, abstract theory, and other things which may lack any immediate practical or concrete applications. In contrast, a pragmatist considers such things worthless because they don't produce discernible material or concrete results, and a mundane considers such things worthless because they seem "odd" and take too much effort to understand with no obvious financial results.
In`tel*lec"tu*al (?; 135), a. [L. intellectualis: cf. F. intellectuel.]
1.
Belonging to, or performed by, the intellect; mental; as, intellectual powers, activities, etc.
Logic is to teach us the right use of our reason or intellectual powers. I. Watts.
2.
Endowed with intellect; having the power of understanding; having capacity for the higher forms of knowledge or thought; characterized by intelligence or mental capacity; as, an intellectual person.
Who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity? Milton.
3.
Suitable for exercising the intellect; formed by, and existing for, the intellect alone; perceived by the intellect; as, intellectual employments.
4.
Relating to the understanding; treating of the mind; as, intellectual philosophy, sometimes called "mental" philosophy.
© Webster 1913.
In`tel*lec"tu*al, n.
The intellect or understanding; mental powers or faculties.
Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, Whose higher intellectual more I shun. Milton.
I kept her intellectuals in a state of exercise. De Quincey.
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