Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Hitler and the Germans

Titel: Hitler and the Germans

Stichwort: Dummheit (Verlust der Realität); stultus, nabal, amathes

Kurzinhalt: Stupidity shall mean here that a man, because of his loss of reality, is not in a position to rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives

Textausschnitt: 89c First, the stupidity that we have already repeatedly adduced, Stupidity shall mean here that a man, because of his loss of reality, is not in a position to rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives. So when the central organ for guiding his action, theomorphic nature and openness toward reason and spirit, has ceased functioning, then man will act stupidly. You will remember Professor Besson spoke of Hitler as an idiot, and I said that that is not entirely unjustified, if one understands by "idiot" the stultus in the technical sense. (Fs) (notabene)

89d This phenomenon was always recognized in ancient civilizations. The fool, in Hebrew the nabal, who because of his folly, nebala, creates disorder in the society, is the man who is not a believer, in the Israelite terms of revelation. The amathes, the ionally ignorant man, is for Plato the man who just does not have the authority of reason or who cannot bow to it. The stultus for Thomas is the fool, in the same sense as the amathia of Plato and nebala of the Israelite prophets. This stultus now has suffered loss of reality and acts on the basis of a defective image of reality and thereby creates disorder. For the moment, that is all on the question of stupidity. We will have more to say about it later. (Fs) (notabene)
90a A second point is closely connected with this stupidity: If I have lost certain sectors of reality from my range of experience, I will also be lacking the language for appropriately characterizing them. That means that parallel to the loss of reality and to stupidity there is always the phenomenon of illiteracy. (Fs)

90b In statistics we speak of illiterates as persons who cannot read or write. And the word has this meaning in other languages, too. But in English, better than in German, we have worked out that a man can possibly read and write at the primary school level but still may be a totally stupid guy who cannot express himself with regard to very wide ranges of reality, especially matters of reason and the spirit, and is incapable of understanding them. Such a man is an illiterate. The question is now, can one simply introduce the word "illiteracy" into German as Illiteratentum? I would hesitate to do so and would rather use the established German word Analphabetentum, extending this expression Analphabet to stupidity and to the deficient command of language through loss of reality, in terms of the English meaning of "illiteracy." So there is illiteracy among people who are able to read and write very well, but who, as soon as it is a matter of understanding a problem of reason or of spirit, or questions about right action, of justice, are completely uncomprehending, because they do not get it. There the loss of reality can be noticed, which then also expresses itself in the deficient command of language. (Fs)

90c There is also the very interesting case of Aldous Huxley, who expressly speaks of people who can read and write as the "Alphas" and "Betas."1 They know the alphabet, but that is all. In Germany, in contrast to other Western societies, illiteracy-in this sense of the deficient command of language for the fields centrally important for action-runs through the elite. Not in the sense that all of the elite are illiterate-there are also in Germany very cultured people who have command of the German language; but the socially dominant popular literature that appears in public, including that by certain professors, is written by illiterates. In the next lecture, I shall give you a detailed analysis of illiteracy in Schramm's case. (Fs)