of Stupidity
Conference held in Vienna on 11
and repeated March 17, 1937
at the invitation of the Austrian Werkbund
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Someone who undertakes to speak of stupidity today runs the risk of a snub: they can be accused of pretension, or wanting to disturb the course of historical development. I wrote myself some years ago: "If stupidity was not like to be mistaken for progress, the talent, hope or development, nobody would be stupid. That was in 1931, and no would dare to challenge the world since then has seen more progress and many improvements! So is it gradually became impossible to postpone the question: "What, exactly, that stupidity? "
I also do not forget to say that I, as a writer, I know the stupidity for much longer, we even had more than once collegial relationships! Moreover, when a man comes to literature, he sees resist almost indefinable, which seems to take all forms, be it a personal form, as, for example, that, always dignified, Professor of literary history, which used to be aimed at incalculable distances, disastrously missing the target in the news, be it a more general form, diffuse, as the alteration of critical thinking by the Commercial Judgement, since God in his goodness - whose ways we remain unclear - even human speech has lent to the authors of films. I already described here and there some of these phenomena and redoing or complete this assessment is not necessary (and probably would be a task impossible with the current trend of all things to grow), it is sufficient to note as a undeniable fact that the lack of artistic sense of a people is expressed not only in bad times and in rough shape, but also good and in all forms, so much so that between repression or illegal, and honorary doctorates , allocation of university chairs and the awarding of prizes, there is a difference of degree.
I always doubted that this multiform resistance of a people that prides itself in love to create art and any subtlety of mind was that of stupidity, perhaps a variety particular stupidity, nonsense aesthetic and perhaps affective manifested so, anyway, that what we call "beautiful mind" could be called both "great stupidity" today I see no reason to change his mind. Probably can not we bring everything to stupidity that alters a design as fully human than the art it is also - the experiences of recent years in particular have shown - do their part in the various varieties inertia. But we should not argue that the concept of stupidity has nothing to do here, on the pretext that the understanding and not the feelings that art, on the contrary, over. It would be a mistake. Even the aesthetic pleasure is both trial and feeling. And let me not only to recall, after that great axiom borrowed from Kant, that it speaks an ability to make judgments and aesthetic judgments of taste, but yet again the paradox that it ends this way:
Thesis: The Judgement of taste is not based on concepts, because, otherwise, we could discuss (decided by the evidence).
Antithesis: It is based on concepts, otherwise we would not even discuss it (search for unanimity).
Thereupon, I want to ask a question: would it not, to the basic policy and chaos of life in general, a trial and a contradiction like? And can we expect to find, where trial and due are at home, their sisters and little sisters, the various forms of stupidity? Their importance, I will not insist further. Erasmus of Rotterdam noted, in a delightful book, remained cool as the first day, the Praise of Folly, that is some stupid things without which no man would ever even born!
Thesis: The Judgement of taste is not based on concepts, because, otherwise, we could discuss (decided by the evidence).
Antithesis: It is based on concepts, otherwise we would not even discuss it (search for unanimity).
Thereupon, I want to ask a question: would it not, to the basic policy and chaos of life in general, a trial and a contradiction like? And can we expect to find, where trial and due are at home, their sisters and little sisters, the various forms of stupidity? Their importance, I will not insist further. Erasmus of Rotterdam noted, in a delightful book, remained cool as the first day, the Praise of Folly, that is some stupid things without which no man would ever even born!
We can get some idea of power, huge qu'éhonté all, stupidity on us, seeing the kind of surprise that conspiracy generally welcomes the one who says, when we trusted him, evoking this monster by its name. I started by making the experience on me, I did not take long to get confirmation in history when, off in search of predecessors in the study of stupidity - and I've met a few Moreover, the sages apparently preferring to deal with wisdom! - I received a scholar of my friends text of a lecture of 1866 authored by Joh. Ed Erdmann, a student of Hegel and a professor at Halle. The conference, entitled De stupidity, indeed begins by evoking the laughter that had greeted his announcement, and since I know that even a Hegelian can be exposed, I am convinced there is something special about this man's attitude toward those who want to deal with stupidity - and the certainty of having power and caused a powerful psychological and deeply ambiguous fills me with puzzlement.
I prefer to confess my weakness immediately before this problem is that I do not know what it is. I have not discovered the theory of stupidity with which I could undertake to save the world, I have not even found, within the limits of scientific reserve, one researcher who has finished its purpose, not even the testimony of a unanimity would have somehow made about him in the analysis of similar phenomena. Perhaps this is it my lack of information but it is more likely that the question "What stupidity? Is unnatural to modern thought that the question "What is the beautiful, or well, or electricity? "First wish to clarify this concept and find this question preliminary to any existence as a response weighted as possible nonetheless bright, so one day, I too wanted to answer the question of what stupidity "In reality, not what form it spreads, which is rather the duty and responsibility of my job. And when I refused the help of literature and science that rejected me, I tried to go about it quite naively, as we tried to do in such cases, Students simply use the word "beast" and related words, by examining the most common examples and trying to compare my observations. Unfortunately, this kind of approach still looks a bit like chasing butterflies: they may well take a moment without losing sight of the object believed to be observed, but as it soon to occur elsewhere, and by the same zigzag, like all other Lepidoptera, we do not know soon if it is the same that continues. Thus the examples of the stupidity family will not always sure if their relationship is really original or just outside, and if you are not inadvertently passed from one to another; and it will not be so easy to gather them all under one hat, which can be said that he is really made for an empty head.
In such cases, the way we start is roughly indifferent ; Therefore start anyhow, but preferably may be the initial problem, which is that whoever wants to talk about the stupidity or gain something from such statements must start from the assumption that he is not stupid itself, that is to say, he proclaimed intelligent judge, even though it generally passes for a brand of stupidity! Now if you wonder why this is so, the first answer that comes to mind seems to be covered with a layer of dust ancestral home, since it states that it is prudent not to show intelligent. This caution suspicious now almost incomprehensible at first, probably dates from a time when it was actually more intelligent, for the lowest, not to be considered such! Stupidity, however, dulls the mistrust she "disarms" as we say today. We find some traces of such Boll Weasel in some reports of dependence where the forces are so unequal that the weaker trying to get away with pretending to be stupider than he is, so for example in so-called tricks of Norman, the domestic trade with their masters better at speaking, the reports of the soldier with the officer, the student with the teacher and the child his parents. The weak who can not irritate the holder of less power than one who does not want. Stupidity puts even "despair", which is undeniably a weakness!
The fact that intelligence is the happy "in armor" [it heats the bile] fits perfectly with that. Probably appreciate it does in humans servile, but only if it is associated with an absolute devotion. The moment the certificate of good conduct is lacking and it is more certain that it serves the interests of the master, rather than intelligence, we baptize the immodesty, insolence, malice, and it seems often, then it is at the very least, undermine the honor and authority of the master, even when she really does not threaten its security. Seen well in school, which is treated more harshly a gifted but rebellious by a stubborn apathy. In ethics, this has earned us the idea that desire is even worse what better awareness against which it acts. Justice itself has not remained entirely free of personal bias: a crime with intelligence is punished more severely, as "refined" and "cruel." Politics Finally, everyone can pick his examples he finds them.
The fact that intelligence is the happy "in armor" [it heats the bile] fits perfectly with that. Probably appreciate it does in humans servile, but only if it is associated with an absolute devotion. The moment the certificate of good conduct is lacking and it is more certain that it serves the interests of the master, rather than intelligence, we baptize the immodesty, insolence, malice, and it seems often, then it is at the very least, undermine the honor and authority of the master, even when she really does not threaten its security. Seen well in school, which is treated more harshly a gifted but rebellious by a stubborn apathy. In ethics, this has earned us the idea that desire is even worse what better awareness against which it acts. Justice itself has not remained entirely free of personal bias: a crime with intelligence is punished more severely, as "refined" and "cruel." Politics Finally, everyone can pick his examples he finds them.
But stupidity as well - is probably inevitable objection here - far from it always soothes, can irritate. To be brief, say it usually excites impatience, but in extraordinary circumstances, the cruelty and excesses of this heinous cruelty disease is commonly referred to as sadism show only too often in the role of victims, idiots. This obviously comes from what they are cruel to easier prey, but also seems related to the fact that the inability to resist all that emanates from their person excites the imagination as the smell of blood the beast, and leads to a kind of desert where cruelty "goes too far" just because, or nearly so, that it runs nowhere limits. This is a trait of one who inflicts suffering in pain, weakness inserted in its brutality, and while the indignation of compassion prevents privileged usually seen, it is necessary to cruelty, as in love, two partners who agree! Analyze it would certainly be an important task in a humanity that also troubled by its current "loose cruelty towards the weak "- as probably the most common definition of sadism, but if you do not want to lose sight of the goal pursued here, and given our first small collection of examples, what was said This subject may already seem like a digression, which we will simply retain, essentially, that he may be stupid to say intelligent, but not always smart to go for stupid. No way to draw any generalization or would only qualify as the most intelligent that we have to do in this world is to make us out as little as possible! And indeed, this is a trait that has been often drawn under the word wisdom. But more often, we have made this conclusion - which leads to savagery - a purely symbolic use or shy, after which we thought would result in modest or advice from other commands the largest yet , but also get us out entirely those of stupidity and intelligence.
The fear of appearing stupid like hitting the conveniences that make many men who consider themselves intelligent are careful to say. And if they are forced to talk yet, they resort to circumlocutions, such as "I'm not more stupid another. "But we'd rather lay in a tone as neutral and objective as possible, the remark" I think I can say I have normal intelligence. At other times, the belief being smart resurfaced by the band, as in the idiomatic phrase, "I will not let me go stupid! "The thing is all the more remarkable because it is not only the private individual who is judged, in his secret heart, extraordinarily intelligent and well endowed, but that man also said public or told to him as soon as he has power, he is supremely intelligent, enlightened, noble, sovereign, gracious, chosen by God and doomed a historical destiny. He even said another, as long as the reflection of it adds to his own brilliance. We find in titles like Your Majesty, Your Eminence, Your Excellency or Your Grace fossilized tracks and almost definitely dead, but found it full of vitality today whenever the man speaks as mass. Some lower layer of the middle classes - intellectually and morally - in particular, displays a claim in this regard as indecent properly manifested in the shelter of a party, a nation, a sect or even an artistic trend and feel empowered to say "we" instead of "I".
Under a reserve which is obvious and can be neglected, this claim may also have vanity name, and he reigns today in the hearts of many states and nations including feelings of vanity undeniably occupies a place privileged, yet there has always been between stupidity and vanity a close - which provides us with perhaps a hint. Someone often seems conceited beast, already, simply because he did not have the intelligence to hide, but even that would not be necessary, at bottom, because the relationship vanity and stupidity is a direct order: someone conceited gives the impression it produces less than it could - like a machine that steam escapes the wrong place. The old adage: "Vanity and stupidity grow on the same stem" does not mean anything, as the expression of vanity "blind". That we associate with the concept of vanity is waiting for a lower production, the other meaning of the word "vain" is very close to "useless". And this lower production is expected even where there is still production: vanity and talent are also often linked, but we then the impression that production could be greater if the vanity itself there was a bar. This representation, so tenacious, with a lower production also appear later as representing the most general that we do of stupidity.
But if we avoid behavior vain, it's not, you know, because it may be stupid, mostly because it strikes conveniences. "Who is rented s'emboue," says an old proverb, and that means bragging, talking too much and too self bragging is considered not only unintelligent, but inappropriate. If I am not mistaken, the requirements that are among the many injured and various reserve commands for the spare room for complacency, assuming that it is as big as others in yourself. But these commands on the distances to observe also condemn the use of words too direct, they will bear the greetings and forbid them not to contradict or be excused to begin a letter with the word "I" in short, they require compliance with certain rules to avoid too much familiarity - that is to say close. Their task is to reconcile and harmonize the contacts, to facilitate self-love like the next and to ensure trade in men, somehow, a average temperature, such requirements are found in all societies, even more, even, in primitive than in the very civilized, and are not even ignored from that, dumb animals, as it is easy to detect in many of their rituals. However, this concern for distance prohibits not only to praise himself, but also hire others to excess. Tell someone, in front, he is a genius or a saint would be almost as big as the assertiveness to slather on your face or hair pulling would not be much better for our modern taste, insult others. We merely suggest that we no more stupid or worse than another, as was already noted above!
course, what is proscribed where order reigns, these are the words without measure and without morals. And, after speaking of the vanity which the peoples and parties today to flaunt strength to believe enlightened, we must now add that the majority Epicurean - just like the individual in his megalomaniac dreams awake - not only monopolized wisdom, but virtue, and is brave, noble, invincible, pious and beautiful, especially as men in today's world, tend, once they are in number, to afford all that they are not permitted as individuals. So, seeing these privileges "we" grown up, it seems that the work of civilization and domestication of increasing the individual must be compensated by a proportional décivilisation nations, states and political brotherhoods; this manifested publication is nothing but a disorder of emotional balance prior to the bottom, the opposition of self and us, and to any moral evaluation. But is this yet - we asked you - the stupidity, that there still anything to do with it?
Dear listeners! Nobody doubts that. But let us rather, before answering, to take breath using a sample that is not without approval! All of us, but especially us men, and above all the famous writers, we know what type of woman who burned to give us the romance of his life and whose soul seems to have been constantly in an interesting situation without ever reaching the happy outcome she expects perhaps precisely for us. This lady is not she stupid? Something in the abundance of our impressions, we usually whispers so. But civility and fairness as well, ordering to admit it is not completely or always. She talks a lot about herself, and much at all. She edge, with decision, everything. She is vain and indiscreet. She often makes the lesson. Ordinarily, it is not quite right with her love life, and life in general did not succeed too well. But is there no other human varieties which all or substantially also applies exactly? Many talk about oneself, for example, is also a lack of egoists, anxious and even a certain class of melancholy. And all these features apply perfectly to the youth which is almost a phenomenon Growth among others as much about themselves, be vain, give lessons, not in good standing with life, in short, to show exactly the same defects of mind and convenience - without being silly or at least, more stupid it is natural to someone who, precisely, has not yet become intelligent!
Ladies and Gentlemen! The judgments of everyday life and his anthropology are usually on target, but also, usually, next. They were not trained for a true doctrine, they do in fact represent movements of assent or refusal mind. The above example thus shows that something may be stupid but not necessarily, that the meaning of the word changes with context, and that stupidity is closely interwoven with anything, anywhere without exceeding the thread that would, if we pulled over, to undo all of a sudden the stuff. The same genius is indissolubly linked to the stupidity and the prohibition, under pain of being stupid, too much talk about oneself, humankind has managed to turn the original way: by inventing the writer. He has the right, on behalf of human sense, to tell that he has eaten the sun shining in the sky, it has the right to express itself, to disclose secrets to confide, delivering brutally personal balance sheets - at least many of them do they! -; All this as if humanity is exceptionally permitted himself everything she undertakes elsewhere. In this way, she speaks tirelessly of herself and is already having told a million times, thanks to the writers, the same stories and the same adventure, without removing it for any progress or gain meaning. Would it not there in the use it makes of its literature and the docility of it for that purpose, suspect in turn, after everything from stupidity? As for me, I do not want the thing to impossible!
exist in any case, between the scope of the stupidity and immorality - including this word in the broadest sense, unconventional today, which is roughly equivalent to ignorance of what the mind rather qu'inintelligence - a complex mixture of similarities and differences. And these links are undoubtedly close to what Johann Eduard Erdmann expressed in a famous passage of the above conference by stating that the brutality was "the practice of stupidity." He writes: "The words [...] are not the only manifestation of a state of mind. This is also reflected in deeds. It's the same stupidity. "Doing stupid things" - the practice of stupidity, so - or stupidity in action is what we call the brutality. Now, this statement tells us convincingly in particular that stupidity is a sin against the feeling - as the brutality is one! This brings us straight in the direction of this "disorder of emotional balance" which had been alluded earlier without finding an explanation. It is assumed that the explanation of the phrase Erdmann does not coincide perfectly with the truth, for, not to mention the fact that it concerns only the individual brutal, non-sided, as opposed to man "educated" and would encompass not all applications of stupidity, brutality is not just stupidity, stupidity or simply a brutality that is why, in the report of affect and intellect as they are found combined in the "stupidity applied, there is still much to be elucidated. This is what we must now come, and we can not do better, again, only with the help of examples.
Is consideration to better outline the concept of foolishness, it must first loosen the ruling that would be stupidity only or ultimate lack of intelligence, as has been noted elsewhere by showing that the most common representation that we are doing seems to be that of the abdication of the most diverse tasks, and thus the a lack of general physical and intellectual. Our dialect we provide a striking example: the word that means a hard of hearing - so a physical defect - or is derisch terisch , that is to say tôrisch [crazy], a word not very away from "stupid". Moreover, it is quite in the same sense of what took ordinary, popularly, the charge of stupidity. When a champion athlete had failed at the decisive moment, he readily says afterwards: "I have lost my mind," or "I do not know where my head", although the role of the head in boxing or Swimming is still quite difficult to specify. Similarly, in a group of children or sporting fraternity, who appears clumsy, was there a Holderlin, is accused of stupidity. So too in business, one that is neither clever nor unscrupulous going there often stupid. Overall, these species of stupidity correspond to species of intelligence prior to those officially in honor of today For example, if my information is correct, the ancient Germans put the representations not only legal, but even the concepts of education, experience and wisdom, that the intellectual concepts in relation to war and fighting. Thus, each intelligence has its stupidity, and animal psychology itself has discovered in his tests of intelligence, that each "type of performance" is another "type of stupidity." Those who seek
the concept of intelligence as led by General would therefore adopt these analogies to that of "capacity", so that every human person could occasionally be called stupid. In fact, it is so even when the capacity on some stupidity is not expressly qualified intelligence. The kind of ability that comes to the forefront and ready for a time content to the concepts of intelligence and stupidity dependent life forms. In times of personal insecurity, cunning, strength, acuity of the senses and the physical address permeate the concept of intelligence, in times more intellectual - and we must add, with reservations required alas, bourgeois - c 'is the brain activity that it replaces. More precisely, it is the activity top of the mind which is expected, but the tide has led to the dominance of one mind, which falls on the empty face and under the front drive of the busy man, and explained that nowadays , intelligence and stupidity, as if it could be otherwise, relate only to the understanding and measurement of its ability, albeit somewhat biased.
The general concept of disability related to the word "beast" - meaning both total disability than any particular disability - also implies a striking consequence: that the words "stupid" and "stupidity "Because they mean disability in general, may be substituted at any word used to designate a particular. This is one reason why the mutual criticism of stupidity is so prevalent today. (In another respect, it is also the cause of the difficulty encountered in defining it, as our examples have shown.) Think for a moment to Annotations covering the margins of the most ambitious novels remained long enough in the circuit almost anonymous lending libraries: we find that the decision of the player finally alone with the author expressed preference for the word beast! or its equivalent: stupid! , absurd! , unfathomable stupidity! , etc.. These are also the first formulations of the outrage expressed in the theaters or art galleries when man faces mass a creator who shocked. And this is also the place to speak the word kitsch, from the artists themselves, is the preferred translation of the first reactions, without that we can, to my knowledge anyway, define or explain its use, unless to use the verb verkitschen which means, in colloquial usage, "give below the price "Or" sell out ". Kitsch therefore designate a commodity of junk or rubbish, and I readily believe that we would find that sense, of course implemented in terms of mind, whenever the term is used unconsciously right.
Since the trash, the balances are focused in this word, the meaning of goods "incapable" of no practical value, and that the inability and lack of practical value also form the basis of the word "beast", it is hardly an exaggeration to say that we tend to call anything that does not suit us - especially when we claim, other than that, The upper estimate "cultural" - "more or less stupid." And, to define what "more or less, it is significant that the use of the terms of stupidity is inseparable from another, which includes no less imperfect expressions of vulgar and morally offensive, which delays the second time our attention to the common destiny of the concepts of "stupidity" and "unseemly." Among the critical judgments about art or life quite rough, not rough, it is indeed not only the word kitsch aesthetic formula original intellectual, but moral type exclamations such as "crap" - " "disgusting! "" Vile! "" Morbid! "" Scandalous! . It may, however, that these expressions involve again, even when used indiscriminately, an intellectual effort, and some nuance of meaning, so their finiton ultimately replace the already almost inarticulate exclamation, "a vulgarity! "That can replace all others and share the world with its empire during" a nonsense! . If these two forms may optionally be substituted for all others, it is obviously that "beast" has taken the meaning of incapable in general, and "vulgar" in that unseemly General. Spy on the human judgments about each other, today it appears that the self-portrait of humanity, as it is smuggled from photographs of reciprocal groups, is made entirely of variations on these two terms unsightly.
Perhaps, is it worth thinking about. Undoubtedly, both represent the lowest level of a trial still in draft form, the critical yet fully informed of someone who feels that something is wrong without being able to say what. The use of these two words is the most simplistic translation can be a refusal is the beginning of a response, but also already over. There is something "short circuit" and will be better understood if one considers that "beast" and "vulgar", whatever may be their way, working also as insults. For the meaning of insults, as we know, depends less on content than their use: thus many of us who like donkeys, are offended to be treated as such. The injury does not assume the image it evokes, but a mixture of images, feelings and intentions that can only point, but absolutely not translate. Incidentally, they share this trait with buzz words and foreign words, which explains why they seem indispensable even though we may well find their equivalents. For this reason also that there is abuse in an irritant - elusive - to coincide with their intentions more than their content, and nothing shows this better perhaps than the names that throw themselves head to tease the children. Sometimes just a child treats the other as "Jules" or "Augustus" to turn, thanks to mysterious connections, in a rage.
But what we say here insults, teasing words, foreign words or fashion, we can also say words of love, slogans, words to laugh, and the characteristic common to all these words, moreover, so diverse, that they are in the service of affect and must precisely their vagueness and lack of objectivity in their power to encroach on vast areas most relevant terms, more objective and rigorous. It is clear that this need can sometimes be felt in life, and we do not deny them any value, but what happens then, no doubt either that this is stupid, or borrow, to some extent, paths of the same stupidity phenomenon whose study is particularly easy on one of the major examples and somehow the lack of official brain, panic. When someone is subjected to a test too heavy for him, be it a sudden fear or moral pressure too long, it is possible to act, suddenly, "brainless". It may start to scream, as children do, he may flee "fishing expedition" or a danger, not less blindly, throw it, or still be experiencing a need frantic destroy, insult or moan. In short, instead of the single act effectively demanded by the state, it performs many other who are apparently still in reality often unnecessary, if not set-cons. The best example of this contradiction is the "panic" but we can also speak in a looser sense of panic of rage, greed and even affection - that is to say, in all cases where a state of excitement can take end so violently that blind and foolish. There is a panic courage, distinct from the panic only by the opposite result, a courageous man as spiritual as noted long ago.
Psychologists believe that it occurs in the panic, a suspension of business intelligence and, more generally, the higher functions of the mind which is replaced by a more primitive psychic movement; but it is permitted to add that while the paralysis that accompanies and strangulation of the understanding, much less is a regression to instinctive action that, through it, to an instinct of last resort and a last form of emergency action. This form of action is that of absolute helplessness; devoid of any plan, it seems that reason, as any instinct hello, has abandoned, but her unconscious plan is to replace the quality of actions by their quantity, and its tip, which is not poor, is based on the probability that a hundred blind attempts, far from the target, there is one that touches. The man who lost his head, the insect, having struck the flying hours of a closed window, is finally, by chance, to escape by that remained open, do not act. otherwise, to their dismay, that does the tactician by determining when to "cover" its target, it uses the wreath or shooter shooting dispersed, or even simply or grenade shrapnel.
This, in other words, substitute for an intensive action extensively, and nothing is more human than replacing the ownership of words and actions by their quantity. However, there is in the use of imprecise words a great analogy with the use of many words; Indeed, a word is unclear, there are many more things we can apply it, and we can say the same words that are not targets. If these words are stupid, stupidity is therefore akin to panic, and the abuse of the accusation of stupidity and its hard to look like a rescue attempt through psychological methods and archaic - without any doubt we have the right to say it - unhealthy. And we can recognize in fact, in the correct use of the charge that something is stupid - or vulgar - not just a suspension of the intellect, but a blind tendency to leak or acts senseless destruction. These words are not mere insulting words, they depict a scene of outrage. When they constitute the very last resort, the assault is not far away. To return to the examples cited above, one sees in such cases, tables - if the one who painted them - attacked with an umbrella, books thrown on the floor, as if this gesture was enough to defuse them. But again, we find paralyzing oppression before these attacks and they are supposed to liberate, "there is a lack of stifling" of anger, "we have no more words", excluding the most general and the poorest, to translate his condition; "We lose the floor," "we have the breath." The man who lost his speech and head, so can not burst. He suffered intolerable feelings of inadequacy, and the words that often precede the explosion: "Ultimately, it was too stupid," proved surprisingly insightful. But it "was too stupid" thing to say. In periods where we particularly appreciate the power and grip, it is useful to also think about what they like sometimes mistaken.
ladies and gentlemen! There is much talk today of a crisis confidence of humanism, a crisis that threatens the trust that was set up to man, we could also speak of a kind of panic on the verge of succeeding where the assurance we were able to carry our boat under the banner of freedom and reason. And we must not blind us to these two moral concepts - which extend to the morality of creating artistic freedom and reason, concepts that the classical age of cosmopolitanism German had bequeathed us as criteria for human dignity, began from the middle of the nineteenth century or later, showing signs of decrepitude. They gradually ceased to "be current" is no longer well known "what to do," and if we let them shrivel like manner, the credit is due less to their opponents and their supporters. Yet we must not imagine ever coming back more, we or our descendants, as shown in these representations and our task, and the meaning of the tests imposed in mind, is rather - as is the task, full of hope and torment, so rarely understood, of each generation - perform with the least possible losses and the not always necessary if you want to meet New! And the more we have neglected the transition, essential when necessary, by ideas intermediate between tradition and change, the more you will need to succeed, based on clear representations of what is true, reasonable, meaningful, intelligent, and therefore, conversely, what is stupid. But how to form a notion, even partial, of stupidity, when they stumble of understanding and wisdom? At what point designs change over time, let me give you a small example here: in a textbook of psychiatry once well known, the question: "What is justice? ", The following response:" Because the other is punished! "Was cited as an example of notable imbecility, today however, it is the foundation for a conception of law amply discussed. So I am afraid that even the smallest developments can not find a conclusion, if we do not at least to sense the existence of a nucleus independent of temporal variations. Where one or two comments and questions.
I am not empowered to introduce myself as a psychologist, and I take good care, but a quick look on the side of science is probably the first thing we can expect some help in our case. The former psychology had distinguished between sensitivity, will, feeling and power of representation or intellect in his eyes, it was clear that stupidity was tantamount to a low degree of intelligence. But modern psychology has withdrawn its importance to the basic distinction of psychic powers, recognized the interdependence and interpenetration of different activities of the soul and, in turn, made the answer to the question of the psychological significance of the much less simple stupidity. The current design still admits, of course, a certain autonomy of the activity of the understanding, but it seems likely that even in situations of serenity maximum attention, comprehension, memory, and almost everything related to the understanding also depend on the emotional character, to which is added, in moments of passion or intense reflection, a second form of interpenetration where intellect and emotion are absolutely inseparable. However, this difficulty of separating mind and emotion in the concept of intelligence will naturally return to that of stupidity, and when medical psychology, for example, uses to describe the mental activity of unsound mind, in terms such as: poor, imprecise and incapable of abstraction, confused, slow, influenced, Superficial, narrow-minded, rigid, demanding, unstable, incoherent, it is obvious that these descriptions sometimes refer to the understanding, sometimes the feeling. We can therefore say that stupidity and intelligence are both one and another; as to whether they are more of one than the other, if, for example, imbecility, the weakness of the intelligence is "first", or if it is, among many illustrious legalistic moral sentiment sclerosis is a question that can be left to the specialists and we will have to fend for other secular in a somewhat freer.
In everyday life day is generally defined by a stupid man someone "a little weak in the head." But there is a wide variety of intellectual and psychological abnormalities that can so hinder, impede, even mislead intelligence naturally intact as it finally ends again to something for which the language does not, once again, that the word stupidity. This term encompasses the bottom are two very different species: all nonsense honest, simple, and one that, paradoxically, may even be a sign of intelligence. The first is rather a general weakness of the understanding, The second weakness of the latter with respect to a particular object, is by far the most dangerous.
Stupidity honest is a bit slow to understand, it does not "thinking-easy," as they say. Poor performances and vocabulary, she can hardly use it. She prefers the mundane, the same frequency makes assimilation easier, and once she has learned something, she is disinclined to let him back too quickly, or we allow the analysis or to equivocate on it. She also has its fair share of "cheeks" of life! Without doubt it is often confused in his thinking that paralyzes easily any new experience, suddenly, it sticks in preference to what is accessible to the senses, that it may, somehow, counting on his fingers. In a word, is good "pure nonsense" and if it was sometimes hopelessly gullible, confused and hopeless, a phenomenon that would be quite pleasant.
I can not hold me to illustrate a few aspects, taking my examples Treaty Bleuler psychiatry. What we ship out a formula: "Physician to the bedside of a patient", becomes of unsound mind: "A man taking hand to another lying in bed, sister is standing beside. "Just the style of a primitive painter! A servant takes a little stamped for a bad joke council to entrust their savings to a savings fund so they earn interest: who would be dumb enough to keep him and give him his money still in the market over ? ! Response reflecting a mindset and a chivalrous conception of money we could not find in my youth now, as distinguished from old people! A third mental defective, symptomatically, claims that a piece of 2 F has less value than a piece of 1 F plus two 50 cents, explaining that the piece of 2 GB, it should be changed, and you get out too soon ... I hope not to be the only mentally retarded in this room who wholeheartedly endorses this theory, thinking about those who are always distracted when changing money!
But to return to its relationship with art: the naive stupidity is often a genuine artist. Instead of reacting to a word-bait one another, as was the custom formerly in many experiments, it responds immediately by whole sentences which, whatever may be said, do not fail poetry! Here, with the word "bait, some
Light: The lighter the wood baker.
Winter: Is snow.
Father: He threw me one day down the stairs.
Marriage: Serves as a distraction.
Garden: In the garden, it's always sunny.
Religion: When you go to church.
Who was William Tell? It was played in the forest, there were women and children in costume.
Who was the apostle Peter? He sang three times.
The naivety and the very practical nature of these responses, the substitution of a story to more sophisticated representations, the importance attached to the accessory, the circumstantial or unnecessary, or contrary to condensation and abbreviation - as in the example of Saint Peter - that's very old poetic recipes and even though I think the abuse of these processes, as it is in vogue today, brings the poet of the idiot, do not ignore what they have really poetic. And this explains the shape of mind of the idiot has been represented with so much pleasure in literature.
Between this and the other honest mistake, the higher the pretentious, the contrast is often too glaring. This stupidity then is less a lack of intelligence an abdication of the latter to the tasks it claims to do, so they do not suit him, and may include all the negative characteristics of a weak mind, but with the addition All those involved in an emotional imbalance, infringing, improper, in a word morbid. Since there is no affectivities "normalized", this deviation reflects more accurately sickly disharmony between bias and a sense of understanding unable to moderate them. This is stupidity than the real disease of training - say, in fact, to avoid any misunderstanding, it is lack of training, training missed, unwelcome, imbalance between its substance and strength, and describe it would be an almost endless task. It can affect up to the highest intellectuality, because if stupidity is a genuine artist peaceful, intelligent stupidity, which contributes to the mobility of the life of the mind, especially its causes instability and sterility. There are already many years, I wrote about him: "It is not a single important thought that stupidity knows immediately use and can move in all directions and take all the costumes for the truth . Truth She has only one garment, one way: it is always disabled. "The stupidity of which this is not a mental illness, this is nonetheless the most dangerous disease of the mind, because that's life even threatens.
We should probably start with the track in us, instead of waiting for its large historic eruptions to recognize it. But recognize what? And what wilt unequivocally give it? Current psychiatry gives essential for cases which are unable to orient themselves in life, the abdication all the tasks it imposes, or suddenly to those to which we are not prepared. Experimental psychology, which deals mostly healthy individuals, does not define it differently. "We call the beast of conduct who is unable to perform a task for which all conditions are met, except for personal," wrote one known representative of one of the most recent trends in the discipline. This test of the ability to act objectively, so effectively, leaves nothing to be desired for "case" unequivocal clinical or laboratory to monkey, but the existence of other "cases" running freely around the world requires some additional , because "the performance right or wrong of the task is not always at home, so obvious. First, the ability to behave at all times just like a man who in a given circumstance already implies the ambiguity of the superior intelligence and stupidity because the behavior "useful," "competent" may serve his subject to personal gain or otherwise serve, and he who is generally considered one that makes the other as a beast. (So what only medically stupid one who can do neither one nor the other.) Secondly, one can not deny that behavior non-objective and even inappropriate is often required; objectivity and impersonality, lack of objectivity and subjectivity are indeed related and if the counter without subjectivity is ridiculous behavior is absolutely objective, of course, untenable, unthinkable even . Ensure their balance is just one of the major problems of our culture. Finally, one could still argue all the occasions when someone does not behave as intelligently it is necessary, and deduce that each of us to watch, if not constantly, at least from time to time, stupid. We must therefore distinguish also between abdication and failure, between stupidity occasional or constant or stupidity and Functional Constitutional between error and stupidity. This is one of the things that matter most, because the current living conditions are such, form a vast, complex, so chaotic, that the occasional nonsense individuals can easily lead to a constitutional stupidity of the community. The observer is thus led beyond the realm of personal, to conceive of a society afflicted with some mental defects. Probably can not be transferred phenomena affecting the real psychology of the individual, so in particular mental illness and stupidity, companies But we should be able to speak today in many respects, a "social imitation mental weaknesses" in the examples are quite blind.
With these further remarks, we certainly have again exceeded the limits of psychological explanation. Ball rod reflection tells us that intelligent guess defined qualities - clarity, precision, richness, flexibility combined with strength - and more likely to list, and that these qualities are, to some extent, innate, the other vested, in addition to knowledge that is appropriated as a kind of intellectual dexterity : A good understanding and a clever brain meaning roughly the same. No other obstacles to overcome here than laziness and natural disposition, this can be a workout, and the term comedy of "intellectual sport" does not so bad, after all, what it returns.
But stupidity "smart" has less to understanding the adversary and the spirit - if not understood as a simple sum of feelings - the emotions. As thoughts and feelings evolve together, and that is the same man who speaks through them, notions such qu'étroitesse, size, flexibility, simplicity and precision can be applied both to think that feeling, and even if the resulting combination is not yet fully clear, it is sufficient that we can say that the understanding of emotions is also and that our feelings are not without ties to the intelligence and stupidity. Against this type of stupidity, we must act by example and criticism.
design advocated here differs from the conventional view which, though certainly not wrong, it does not show unless excessively unilateral supporting a deep emotional, authentic, does that make the understanding, and not even being desecrated by him. The truth is that among single people, some valuable qualities such as loyalty, perseverance, purity of feeling and similar appear without mixing, but simply because the competition from other low: we saw a case boundary in the example of the idiocy gladly consented. Far be it from me to belittle these remarks the good and loyal natures - their absence plays a significant role in the superior foolishness! But it is even more important now to emphasize the concept of "significant", it says clearly in the form of absolute utopia. The significant associates
truth that we can perceive in him the qualities of feeling that our confidence to get a brand new, which is both understanding and decision obstinacy refreshed, something that has a content of both mental and psychical and "demands" of us or some other behavior, we could say, and that, for stupidity, in essence, that the material is accessible to both the rational aspect that the affective criticism. The material is also contrary to both the stupidity and brutality, and the general misunderstanding that now allows emotions to stifle reason, instead of giving wings, is abolished in the notion of meaning. But enough about this, or maybe even more than we already do could afford! For if he had to add another word, it might just be that everything has been said is still far from providing a criterion by which to identify and distinguish the significant certainly, and that provide would undoubtedly be difficult enough. But now that leads us straight to the best weapon against stupidity: modesty.
We are all creatures on the occasion, the occasion too, we are forced to act blindly or half-blind, otherwise the world would stop, and if someone pulled the dangers of this stupid rule, "Abstain to judge and decide when you lack information, we figerions. But this situation we are today in a world reminiscent of another that we have long known, in the intellectual sphere. Indeed, as our knowledge and power are limited, we are reduced in all the sciences, to articulate premature judgments, but ensuring, as we were taught to maintain the defect within certain limits and to correct if necessary, which restores some of our work correctly. Nothing, in fact, no reason why we will transfer into other areas such accuracy and the proud humility of the decision and action, and I believe that the precept "Act as well as you can and as bad you owe, while remaining aware of the error margins of your action! "Would have, if followed, half way towards a truly productive reform of our lives.
However, for a while now, these prospects have led me to the end of my presentation that - I had warned my audience - could only be a preliminary study. And now, the foot on the boundary I confess myself unable to go beyond just a step farther, in fact, and we should leave the field of stupidity that remains, even discussed theoretically, if varied, for the kingdom of wisdom, and generally deprived area avoided by travelers.
Under a reserve which is obvious and can be neglected, this claim may also have vanity name, and he reigns today in the hearts of many states and nations including feelings of vanity undeniably occupies a place privileged, yet there has always been between stupidity and vanity a close - which provides us with perhaps a hint. Someone often seems conceited beast, already, simply because he did not have the intelligence to hide, but even that would not be necessary, at bottom, because the relationship vanity and stupidity is a direct order: someone conceited gives the impression it produces less than it could - like a machine that steam escapes the wrong place. The old adage: "Vanity and stupidity grow on the same stem" does not mean anything, as the expression of vanity "blind". That we associate with the concept of vanity is waiting for a lower production, the other meaning of the word "vain" is very close to "useless". And this lower production is expected even where there is still production: vanity and talent are also often linked, but we then the impression that production could be greater if the vanity itself there was a bar. This representation, so tenacious, with a lower production also appear later as representing the most general that we do of stupidity.
But if we avoid behavior vain, it's not, you know, because it may be stupid, mostly because it strikes conveniences. "Who is rented s'emboue," says an old proverb, and that means bragging, talking too much and too self bragging is considered not only unintelligent, but inappropriate. If I am not mistaken, the requirements that are among the many injured and various reserve commands for the spare room for complacency, assuming that it is as big as others in yourself. But these commands on the distances to observe also condemn the use of words too direct, they will bear the greetings and forbid them not to contradict or be excused to begin a letter with the word "I" in short, they require compliance with certain rules to avoid too much familiarity - that is to say close. Their task is to reconcile and harmonize the contacts, to facilitate self-love like the next and to ensure trade in men, somehow, a average temperature, such requirements are found in all societies, even more, even, in primitive than in the very civilized, and are not even ignored from that, dumb animals, as it is easy to detect in many of their rituals. However, this concern for distance prohibits not only to praise himself, but also hire others to excess. Tell someone, in front, he is a genius or a saint would be almost as big as the assertiveness to slather on your face or hair pulling would not be much better for our modern taste, insult others. We merely suggest that we no more stupid or worse than another, as was already noted above!
course, what is proscribed where order reigns, these are the words without measure and without morals. And, after speaking of the vanity which the peoples and parties today to flaunt strength to believe enlightened, we must now add that the majority Epicurean - just like the individual in his megalomaniac dreams awake - not only monopolized wisdom, but virtue, and is brave, noble, invincible, pious and beautiful, especially as men in today's world, tend, once they are in number, to afford all that they are not permitted as individuals. So, seeing these privileges "we" grown up, it seems that the work of civilization and domestication of increasing the individual must be compensated by a proportional décivilisation nations, states and political brotherhoods; this manifested publication is nothing but a disorder of emotional balance prior to the bottom, the opposition of self and us, and to any moral evaluation. But is this yet - we asked you - the stupidity, that there still anything to do with it?
Dear listeners! Nobody doubts that. But let us rather, before answering, to take breath using a sample that is not without approval! All of us, but especially us men, and above all the famous writers, we know what type of woman who burned to give us the romance of his life and whose soul seems to have been constantly in an interesting situation without ever reaching the happy outcome she expects perhaps precisely for us. This lady is not she stupid? Something in the abundance of our impressions, we usually whispers so. But civility and fairness as well, ordering to admit it is not completely or always. She talks a lot about herself, and much at all. She edge, with decision, everything. She is vain and indiscreet. She often makes the lesson. Ordinarily, it is not quite right with her love life, and life in general did not succeed too well. But is there no other human varieties which all or substantially also applies exactly? Many talk about oneself, for example, is also a lack of egoists, anxious and even a certain class of melancholy. And all these features apply perfectly to the youth which is almost a phenomenon Growth among others as much about themselves, be vain, give lessons, not in good standing with life, in short, to show exactly the same defects of mind and convenience - without being silly or at least, more stupid it is natural to someone who, precisely, has not yet become intelligent!
Ladies and Gentlemen! The judgments of everyday life and his anthropology are usually on target, but also, usually, next. They were not trained for a true doctrine, they do in fact represent movements of assent or refusal mind. The above example thus shows that something may be stupid but not necessarily, that the meaning of the word changes with context, and that stupidity is closely interwoven with anything, anywhere without exceeding the thread that would, if we pulled over, to undo all of a sudden the stuff. The same genius is indissolubly linked to the stupidity and the prohibition, under pain of being stupid, too much talk about oneself, humankind has managed to turn the original way: by inventing the writer. He has the right, on behalf of human sense, to tell that he has eaten the sun shining in the sky, it has the right to express itself, to disclose secrets to confide, delivering brutally personal balance sheets - at least many of them do they! -; All this as if humanity is exceptionally permitted himself everything she undertakes elsewhere. In this way, she speaks tirelessly of herself and is already having told a million times, thanks to the writers, the same stories and the same adventure, without removing it for any progress or gain meaning. Would it not there in the use it makes of its literature and the docility of it for that purpose, suspect in turn, after everything from stupidity? As for me, I do not want the thing to impossible!
exist in any case, between the scope of the stupidity and immorality - including this word in the broadest sense, unconventional today, which is roughly equivalent to ignorance of what the mind rather qu'inintelligence - a complex mixture of similarities and differences. And these links are undoubtedly close to what Johann Eduard Erdmann expressed in a famous passage of the above conference by stating that the brutality was "the practice of stupidity." He writes: "The words [...] are not the only manifestation of a state of mind. This is also reflected in deeds. It's the same stupidity. "Doing stupid things" - the practice of stupidity, so - or stupidity in action is what we call the brutality. Now, this statement tells us convincingly in particular that stupidity is a sin against the feeling - as the brutality is one! This brings us straight in the direction of this "disorder of emotional balance" which had been alluded earlier without finding an explanation. It is assumed that the explanation of the phrase Erdmann does not coincide perfectly with the truth, for, not to mention the fact that it concerns only the individual brutal, non-sided, as opposed to man "educated" and would encompass not all applications of stupidity, brutality is not just stupidity, stupidity or simply a brutality that is why, in the report of affect and intellect as they are found combined in the "stupidity applied, there is still much to be elucidated. This is what we must now come, and we can not do better, again, only with the help of examples.
Is consideration to better outline the concept of foolishness, it must first loosen the ruling that would be stupidity only or ultimate lack of intelligence, as has been noted elsewhere by showing that the most common representation that we are doing seems to be that of the abdication of the most diverse tasks, and thus the a lack of general physical and intellectual. Our dialect we provide a striking example: the word that means a hard of hearing - so a physical defect - or is derisch terisch , that is to say tôrisch [crazy], a word not very away from "stupid". Moreover, it is quite in the same sense of what took ordinary, popularly, the charge of stupidity. When a champion athlete had failed at the decisive moment, he readily says afterwards: "I have lost my mind," or "I do not know where my head", although the role of the head in boxing or Swimming is still quite difficult to specify. Similarly, in a group of children or sporting fraternity, who appears clumsy, was there a Holderlin, is accused of stupidity. So too in business, one that is neither clever nor unscrupulous going there often stupid. Overall, these species of stupidity correspond to species of intelligence prior to those officially in honor of today For example, if my information is correct, the ancient Germans put the representations not only legal, but even the concepts of education, experience and wisdom, that the intellectual concepts in relation to war and fighting. Thus, each intelligence has its stupidity, and animal psychology itself has discovered in his tests of intelligence, that each "type of performance" is another "type of stupidity." Those who seek
the concept of intelligence as led by General would therefore adopt these analogies to that of "capacity", so that every human person could occasionally be called stupid. In fact, it is so even when the capacity on some stupidity is not expressly qualified intelligence. The kind of ability that comes to the forefront and ready for a time content to the concepts of intelligence and stupidity dependent life forms. In times of personal insecurity, cunning, strength, acuity of the senses and the physical address permeate the concept of intelligence, in times more intellectual - and we must add, with reservations required alas, bourgeois - c 'is the brain activity that it replaces. More precisely, it is the activity top of the mind which is expected, but the tide has led to the dominance of one mind, which falls on the empty face and under the front drive of the busy man, and explained that nowadays , intelligence and stupidity, as if it could be otherwise, relate only to the understanding and measurement of its ability, albeit somewhat biased.
The general concept of disability related to the word "beast" - meaning both total disability than any particular disability - also implies a striking consequence: that the words "stupid" and "stupidity "Because they mean disability in general, may be substituted at any word used to designate a particular. This is one reason why the mutual criticism of stupidity is so prevalent today. (In another respect, it is also the cause of the difficulty encountered in defining it, as our examples have shown.) Think for a moment to Annotations covering the margins of the most ambitious novels remained long enough in the circuit almost anonymous lending libraries: we find that the decision of the player finally alone with the author expressed preference for the word beast! or its equivalent: stupid! , absurd! , unfathomable stupidity! , etc.. These are also the first formulations of the outrage expressed in the theaters or art galleries when man faces mass a creator who shocked. And this is also the place to speak the word kitsch, from the artists themselves, is the preferred translation of the first reactions, without that we can, to my knowledge anyway, define or explain its use, unless to use the verb verkitschen which means, in colloquial usage, "give below the price "Or" sell out ". Kitsch therefore designate a commodity of junk or rubbish, and I readily believe that we would find that sense, of course implemented in terms of mind, whenever the term is used unconsciously right.
Since the trash, the balances are focused in this word, the meaning of goods "incapable" of no practical value, and that the inability and lack of practical value also form the basis of the word "beast", it is hardly an exaggeration to say that we tend to call anything that does not suit us - especially when we claim, other than that, The upper estimate "cultural" - "more or less stupid." And, to define what "more or less, it is significant that the use of the terms of stupidity is inseparable from another, which includes no less imperfect expressions of vulgar and morally offensive, which delays the second time our attention to the common destiny of the concepts of "stupidity" and "unseemly." Among the critical judgments about art or life quite rough, not rough, it is indeed not only the word kitsch aesthetic formula original intellectual, but moral type exclamations such as "crap" - " "disgusting! "" Vile! "" Morbid! "" Scandalous! . It may, however, that these expressions involve again, even when used indiscriminately, an intellectual effort, and some nuance of meaning, so their finiton ultimately replace the already almost inarticulate exclamation, "a vulgarity! "That can replace all others and share the world with its empire during" a nonsense! . If these two forms may optionally be substituted for all others, it is obviously that "beast" has taken the meaning of incapable in general, and "vulgar" in that unseemly General. Spy on the human judgments about each other, today it appears that the self-portrait of humanity, as it is smuggled from photographs of reciprocal groups, is made entirely of variations on these two terms unsightly.
Perhaps, is it worth thinking about. Undoubtedly, both represent the lowest level of a trial still in draft form, the critical yet fully informed of someone who feels that something is wrong without being able to say what. The use of these two words is the most simplistic translation can be a refusal is the beginning of a response, but also already over. There is something "short circuit" and will be better understood if one considers that "beast" and "vulgar", whatever may be their way, working also as insults. For the meaning of insults, as we know, depends less on content than their use: thus many of us who like donkeys, are offended to be treated as such. The injury does not assume the image it evokes, but a mixture of images, feelings and intentions that can only point, but absolutely not translate. Incidentally, they share this trait with buzz words and foreign words, which explains why they seem indispensable even though we may well find their equivalents. For this reason also that there is abuse in an irritant - elusive - to coincide with their intentions more than their content, and nothing shows this better perhaps than the names that throw themselves head to tease the children. Sometimes just a child treats the other as "Jules" or "Augustus" to turn, thanks to mysterious connections, in a rage.
But what we say here insults, teasing words, foreign words or fashion, we can also say words of love, slogans, words to laugh, and the characteristic common to all these words, moreover, so diverse, that they are in the service of affect and must precisely their vagueness and lack of objectivity in their power to encroach on vast areas most relevant terms, more objective and rigorous. It is clear that this need can sometimes be felt in life, and we do not deny them any value, but what happens then, no doubt either that this is stupid, or borrow, to some extent, paths of the same stupidity phenomenon whose study is particularly easy on one of the major examples and somehow the lack of official brain, panic. When someone is subjected to a test too heavy for him, be it a sudden fear or moral pressure too long, it is possible to act, suddenly, "brainless". It may start to scream, as children do, he may flee "fishing expedition" or a danger, not less blindly, throw it, or still be experiencing a need frantic destroy, insult or moan. In short, instead of the single act effectively demanded by the state, it performs many other who are apparently still in reality often unnecessary, if not set-cons. The best example of this contradiction is the "panic" but we can also speak in a looser sense of panic of rage, greed and even affection - that is to say, in all cases where a state of excitement can take end so violently that blind and foolish. There is a panic courage, distinct from the panic only by the opposite result, a courageous man as spiritual as noted long ago.
Psychologists believe that it occurs in the panic, a suspension of business intelligence and, more generally, the higher functions of the mind which is replaced by a more primitive psychic movement; but it is permitted to add that while the paralysis that accompanies and strangulation of the understanding, much less is a regression to instinctive action that, through it, to an instinct of last resort and a last form of emergency action. This form of action is that of absolute helplessness; devoid of any plan, it seems that reason, as any instinct hello, has abandoned, but her unconscious plan is to replace the quality of actions by their quantity, and its tip, which is not poor, is based on the probability that a hundred blind attempts, far from the target, there is one that touches. The man who lost his head, the insect, having struck the flying hours of a closed window, is finally, by chance, to escape by that remained open, do not act. otherwise, to their dismay, that does the tactician by determining when to "cover" its target, it uses the wreath or shooter shooting dispersed, or even simply or grenade shrapnel.
This, in other words, substitute for an intensive action extensively, and nothing is more human than replacing the ownership of words and actions by their quantity. However, there is in the use of imprecise words a great analogy with the use of many words; Indeed, a word is unclear, there are many more things we can apply it, and we can say the same words that are not targets. If these words are stupid, stupidity is therefore akin to panic, and the abuse of the accusation of stupidity and its hard to look like a rescue attempt through psychological methods and archaic - without any doubt we have the right to say it - unhealthy. And we can recognize in fact, in the correct use of the charge that something is stupid - or vulgar - not just a suspension of the intellect, but a blind tendency to leak or acts senseless destruction. These words are not mere insulting words, they depict a scene of outrage. When they constitute the very last resort, the assault is not far away. To return to the examples cited above, one sees in such cases, tables - if the one who painted them - attacked with an umbrella, books thrown on the floor, as if this gesture was enough to defuse them. But again, we find paralyzing oppression before these attacks and they are supposed to liberate, "there is a lack of stifling" of anger, "we have no more words", excluding the most general and the poorest, to translate his condition; "We lose the floor," "we have the breath." The man who lost his speech and head, so can not burst. He suffered intolerable feelings of inadequacy, and the words that often precede the explosion: "Ultimately, it was too stupid," proved surprisingly insightful. But it "was too stupid" thing to say. In periods where we particularly appreciate the power and grip, it is useful to also think about what they like sometimes mistaken.
ladies and gentlemen! There is much talk today of a crisis confidence of humanism, a crisis that threatens the trust that was set up to man, we could also speak of a kind of panic on the verge of succeeding where the assurance we were able to carry our boat under the banner of freedom and reason. And we must not blind us to these two moral concepts - which extend to the morality of creating artistic freedom and reason, concepts that the classical age of cosmopolitanism German had bequeathed us as criteria for human dignity, began from the middle of the nineteenth century or later, showing signs of decrepitude. They gradually ceased to "be current" is no longer well known "what to do," and if we let them shrivel like manner, the credit is due less to their opponents and their supporters. Yet we must not imagine ever coming back more, we or our descendants, as shown in these representations and our task, and the meaning of the tests imposed in mind, is rather - as is the task, full of hope and torment, so rarely understood, of each generation - perform with the least possible losses and the not always necessary if you want to meet New! And the more we have neglected the transition, essential when necessary, by ideas intermediate between tradition and change, the more you will need to succeed, based on clear representations of what is true, reasonable, meaningful, intelligent, and therefore, conversely, what is stupid. But how to form a notion, even partial, of stupidity, when they stumble of understanding and wisdom? At what point designs change over time, let me give you a small example here: in a textbook of psychiatry once well known, the question: "What is justice? ", The following response:" Because the other is punished! "Was cited as an example of notable imbecility, today however, it is the foundation for a conception of law amply discussed. So I am afraid that even the smallest developments can not find a conclusion, if we do not at least to sense the existence of a nucleus independent of temporal variations. Where one or two comments and questions.
I am not empowered to introduce myself as a psychologist, and I take good care, but a quick look on the side of science is probably the first thing we can expect some help in our case. The former psychology had distinguished between sensitivity, will, feeling and power of representation or intellect in his eyes, it was clear that stupidity was tantamount to a low degree of intelligence. But modern psychology has withdrawn its importance to the basic distinction of psychic powers, recognized the interdependence and interpenetration of different activities of the soul and, in turn, made the answer to the question of the psychological significance of the much less simple stupidity. The current design still admits, of course, a certain autonomy of the activity of the understanding, but it seems likely that even in situations of serenity maximum attention, comprehension, memory, and almost everything related to the understanding also depend on the emotional character, to which is added, in moments of passion or intense reflection, a second form of interpenetration where intellect and emotion are absolutely inseparable. However, this difficulty of separating mind and emotion in the concept of intelligence will naturally return to that of stupidity, and when medical psychology, for example, uses to describe the mental activity of unsound mind, in terms such as: poor, imprecise and incapable of abstraction, confused, slow, influenced, Superficial, narrow-minded, rigid, demanding, unstable, incoherent, it is obvious that these descriptions sometimes refer to the understanding, sometimes the feeling. We can therefore say that stupidity and intelligence are both one and another; as to whether they are more of one than the other, if, for example, imbecility, the weakness of the intelligence is "first", or if it is, among many illustrious legalistic moral sentiment sclerosis is a question that can be left to the specialists and we will have to fend for other secular in a somewhat freer.
In everyday life day is generally defined by a stupid man someone "a little weak in the head." But there is a wide variety of intellectual and psychological abnormalities that can so hinder, impede, even mislead intelligence naturally intact as it finally ends again to something for which the language does not, once again, that the word stupidity. This term encompasses the bottom are two very different species: all nonsense honest, simple, and one that, paradoxically, may even be a sign of intelligence. The first is rather a general weakness of the understanding, The second weakness of the latter with respect to a particular object, is by far the most dangerous.
Stupidity honest is a bit slow to understand, it does not "thinking-easy," as they say. Poor performances and vocabulary, she can hardly use it. She prefers the mundane, the same frequency makes assimilation easier, and once she has learned something, she is disinclined to let him back too quickly, or we allow the analysis or to equivocate on it. She also has its fair share of "cheeks" of life! Without doubt it is often confused in his thinking that paralyzes easily any new experience, suddenly, it sticks in preference to what is accessible to the senses, that it may, somehow, counting on his fingers. In a word, is good "pure nonsense" and if it was sometimes hopelessly gullible, confused and hopeless, a phenomenon that would be quite pleasant.
I can not hold me to illustrate a few aspects, taking my examples Treaty Bleuler psychiatry. What we ship out a formula: "Physician to the bedside of a patient", becomes of unsound mind: "A man taking hand to another lying in bed, sister is standing beside. "Just the style of a primitive painter! A servant takes a little stamped for a bad joke council to entrust their savings to a savings fund so they earn interest: who would be dumb enough to keep him and give him his money still in the market over ? ! Response reflecting a mindset and a chivalrous conception of money we could not find in my youth now, as distinguished from old people! A third mental defective, symptomatically, claims that a piece of 2 F has less value than a piece of 1 F plus two 50 cents, explaining that the piece of 2 GB, it should be changed, and you get out too soon ... I hope not to be the only mentally retarded in this room who wholeheartedly endorses this theory, thinking about those who are always distracted when changing money!
But to return to its relationship with art: the naive stupidity is often a genuine artist. Instead of reacting to a word-bait one another, as was the custom formerly in many experiments, it responds immediately by whole sentences which, whatever may be said, do not fail poetry! Here, with the word "bait, some
Light: The lighter the wood baker.
Winter: Is snow.
Father: He threw me one day down the stairs.
Marriage: Serves as a distraction.
Garden: In the garden, it's always sunny.
Religion: When you go to church.
Who was William Tell? It was played in the forest, there were women and children in costume.
Who was the apostle Peter? He sang three times.
The naivety and the very practical nature of these responses, the substitution of a story to more sophisticated representations, the importance attached to the accessory, the circumstantial or unnecessary, or contrary to condensation and abbreviation - as in the example of Saint Peter - that's very old poetic recipes and even though I think the abuse of these processes, as it is in vogue today, brings the poet of the idiot, do not ignore what they have really poetic. And this explains the shape of mind of the idiot has been represented with so much pleasure in literature.
Between this and the other honest mistake, the higher the pretentious, the contrast is often too glaring. This stupidity then is less a lack of intelligence an abdication of the latter to the tasks it claims to do, so they do not suit him, and may include all the negative characteristics of a weak mind, but with the addition All those involved in an emotional imbalance, infringing, improper, in a word morbid. Since there is no affectivities "normalized", this deviation reflects more accurately sickly disharmony between bias and a sense of understanding unable to moderate them. This is stupidity than the real disease of training - say, in fact, to avoid any misunderstanding, it is lack of training, training missed, unwelcome, imbalance between its substance and strength, and describe it would be an almost endless task. It can affect up to the highest intellectuality, because if stupidity is a genuine artist peaceful, intelligent stupidity, which contributes to the mobility of the life of the mind, especially its causes instability and sterility. There are already many years, I wrote about him: "It is not a single important thought that stupidity knows immediately use and can move in all directions and take all the costumes for the truth . Truth She has only one garment, one way: it is always disabled. "The stupidity of which this is not a mental illness, this is nonetheless the most dangerous disease of the mind, because that's life even threatens.
We should probably start with the track in us, instead of waiting for its large historic eruptions to recognize it. But recognize what? And what wilt unequivocally give it? Current psychiatry gives essential for cases which are unable to orient themselves in life, the abdication all the tasks it imposes, or suddenly to those to which we are not prepared. Experimental psychology, which deals mostly healthy individuals, does not define it differently. "We call the beast of conduct who is unable to perform a task for which all conditions are met, except for personal," wrote one known representative of one of the most recent trends in the discipline. This test of the ability to act objectively, so effectively, leaves nothing to be desired for "case" unequivocal clinical or laboratory to monkey, but the existence of other "cases" running freely around the world requires some additional , because "the performance right or wrong of the task is not always at home, so obvious. First, the ability to behave at all times just like a man who in a given circumstance already implies the ambiguity of the superior intelligence and stupidity because the behavior "useful," "competent" may serve his subject to personal gain or otherwise serve, and he who is generally considered one that makes the other as a beast. (So what only medically stupid one who can do neither one nor the other.) Secondly, one can not deny that behavior non-objective and even inappropriate is often required; objectivity and impersonality, lack of objectivity and subjectivity are indeed related and if the counter without subjectivity is ridiculous behavior is absolutely objective, of course, untenable, unthinkable even . Ensure their balance is just one of the major problems of our culture. Finally, one could still argue all the occasions when someone does not behave as intelligently it is necessary, and deduce that each of us to watch, if not constantly, at least from time to time, stupid. We must therefore distinguish also between abdication and failure, between stupidity occasional or constant or stupidity and Functional Constitutional between error and stupidity. This is one of the things that matter most, because the current living conditions are such, form a vast, complex, so chaotic, that the occasional nonsense individuals can easily lead to a constitutional stupidity of the community. The observer is thus led beyond the realm of personal, to conceive of a society afflicted with some mental defects. Probably can not be transferred phenomena affecting the real psychology of the individual, so in particular mental illness and stupidity, companies But we should be able to speak today in many respects, a "social imitation mental weaknesses" in the examples are quite blind.
With these further remarks, we certainly have again exceeded the limits of psychological explanation. Ball rod reflection tells us that intelligent guess defined qualities - clarity, precision, richness, flexibility combined with strength - and more likely to list, and that these qualities are, to some extent, innate, the other vested, in addition to knowledge that is appropriated as a kind of intellectual dexterity : A good understanding and a clever brain meaning roughly the same. No other obstacles to overcome here than laziness and natural disposition, this can be a workout, and the term comedy of "intellectual sport" does not so bad, after all, what it returns.
But stupidity "smart" has less to understanding the adversary and the spirit - if not understood as a simple sum of feelings - the emotions. As thoughts and feelings evolve together, and that is the same man who speaks through them, notions such qu'étroitesse, size, flexibility, simplicity and precision can be applied both to think that feeling, and even if the resulting combination is not yet fully clear, it is sufficient that we can say that the understanding of emotions is also and that our feelings are not without ties to the intelligence and stupidity. Against this type of stupidity, we must act by example and criticism.
design advocated here differs from the conventional view which, though certainly not wrong, it does not show unless excessively unilateral supporting a deep emotional, authentic, does that make the understanding, and not even being desecrated by him. The truth is that among single people, some valuable qualities such as loyalty, perseverance, purity of feeling and similar appear without mixing, but simply because the competition from other low: we saw a case boundary in the example of the idiocy gladly consented. Far be it from me to belittle these remarks the good and loyal natures - their absence plays a significant role in the superior foolishness! But it is even more important now to emphasize the concept of "significant", it says clearly in the form of absolute utopia. The significant associates
truth that we can perceive in him the qualities of feeling that our confidence to get a brand new, which is both understanding and decision obstinacy refreshed, something that has a content of both mental and psychical and "demands" of us or some other behavior, we could say, and that, for stupidity, in essence, that the material is accessible to both the rational aspect that the affective criticism. The material is also contrary to both the stupidity and brutality, and the general misunderstanding that now allows emotions to stifle reason, instead of giving wings, is abolished in the notion of meaning. But enough about this, or maybe even more than we already do could afford! For if he had to add another word, it might just be that everything has been said is still far from providing a criterion by which to identify and distinguish the significant certainly, and that provide would undoubtedly be difficult enough. But now that leads us straight to the best weapon against stupidity: modesty.
We are all creatures on the occasion, the occasion too, we are forced to act blindly or half-blind, otherwise the world would stop, and if someone pulled the dangers of this stupid rule, "Abstain to judge and decide when you lack information, we figerions. But this situation we are today in a world reminiscent of another that we have long known, in the intellectual sphere. Indeed, as our knowledge and power are limited, we are reduced in all the sciences, to articulate premature judgments, but ensuring, as we were taught to maintain the defect within certain limits and to correct if necessary, which restores some of our work correctly. Nothing, in fact, no reason why we will transfer into other areas such accuracy and the proud humility of the decision and action, and I believe that the precept "Act as well as you can and as bad you owe, while remaining aware of the error margins of your action! "Would have, if followed, half way towards a truly productive reform of our lives.
However, for a while now, these prospects have led me to the end of my presentation that - I had warned my audience - could only be a preliminary study. And now, the foot on the boundary I confess myself unable to go beyond just a step farther, in fact, and we should leave the field of stupidity that remains, even discussed theoretically, if varied, for the kingdom of wisdom, and generally deprived area avoided by travelers.
