'intellectual direction' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing an individual's thought processes, the decisions they have made, or the way in which they have been influenced by external factors. For example: "His interest in philosophy has given him a strong intellectual direction throughout his career."
His sense of intellectual direction is unfailing; unfailingly he follows it too far.
This committee will steer the intellectual direction of the YCRC and advise on budgetary matters.
PIs are responsible for the intellectual direction of research and scholarship and for educating and training students.
Connected with the change in his intellectual direction after the completion of Principia was a profound change in his personal life.
Not since the heady period of Bernstein and Boulez, in the sixties and seventies, has the ensemble shown such a sense of intellectual direction.
He is an Orthodox Jew who seeks guidance from Lubavitcher rabbis, intellectual direction from the English philosopher Karl Popper and economic perspective from Mr. Soros, the financier.
In the 1950s the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School diverged in several intellectual directions.
Princeton is the ideal place, and this is the ideal time, to strike out in new intellectual directions, holding out the possibility that in so doing, you will discover what you were truly meant to do with your life.
For some students, the experience of engaged interdisciplinary research confirms initial intellectual directions and career aspirations.
Your informal advisers question, challenge, and guide you in new intellectual directions, which may, or may not, be directly related to your research project.
Although it is probably not a good thing in general to have the private sector dictate the intellectual directions that our colleges and universities take, much university research undertaken today is of a very basic nature and there are benefits to be gained by connecting more of this activity with real world needs.
