Deep intellectual study initially captivates the whole personality before critical equilibrium forms

Evidence

It is a matter of common observation among all scholars, from personal experience, that any new theory studied with “heroic fury” 469 (that is, studied not out of mere external curiosity but for reasons of deep interest) for a certain period, especially if one is young, attracts the student of its own accord and takes possession of his whole personality, only to be limited by the study of the next theory, until such a time as a critical equilibrium is created and one learns to study deeply but without succumbing to the fascination of the system and the author under study. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1360

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gramsci’s concept of ‘heroic fury’ — the psychological state of intensive study — is introduced and explained as foundational to how one should read theory critically.
• XREF: connects to: Intellectual systems fuse first in lived reality, only later in thought; An initial shocking transcendence is constitutive of all dialectical thinking