A talk delivered at the Institute for Advanced Study as part of the series At Risk: Ethics, Exposure, and Academic Freedom. The speaker examines what it means to treat critical intent, the stance of questioning and challenging prevailing ideas, as a way of living rather than a technique applied only in scholarship. The discussion moves through the risks scholars take on when they expose themselves through public argument, asking what protections academic freedom actually offers once a critique becomes personally costly. Drawing on philosophical method rather than case studies, the lecture treats ethics and intellectual exposure as linked problems: how a commitment to criticism shapes a person's character and standing within an institution, and what it costs to hold that commitment under pressure.