Bonhoeffer‘s Theory of Stupidity
In the darkest chapter of German history,
during a time when incited mobs threw stones into the windows of innocent shop owners and
women and children were cruelly humiliated in the open; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young
pastor, began to speak publicly against the atrocities. After years of trying to change people’s minds,
Bonhoeffer came home one evening and his father had to tell him that two men were waiting
in his room to take him away. In prison, Bonhoeffer began to reflect on
how his country of poets and thinkers had turned into a collective of cowards, crooks, and criminals. Eventually, he concluded that the root of the
problem was not malice, but stupidity. In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer
argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while
“one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force,
against stupidity we are defenseless.
Neither protests nor the use of force accomplishes
anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears.” Facts that contradict a stupid person’s
prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they have just been pushed
aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person is self-satisfied
and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called
for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.
If we want to know how to get the better of
stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, stupidity is in essence
not an intellectual defect but a moral one. There are human beings who are remarkably
agile intellectually yet stupid, and others who are intellectually dull yet anything but
stupid. The impression one gains are not so much that
stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made
stupid or rather, they allow this to happen to them.
People who live in solitude manifest this
defect less frequently than individuals in groups. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps
less a psychological than a sociological problem. It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge
of power, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind
with stupidity. Almost as if this is a sociological-psychological
law where the power of one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular
human capacities, such as intellect, suddenly fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming
impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less
consciously, give up an autonomous position. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn
must not blind us from the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels
that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and
the like that have taken possession of him.
He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and
abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid
person will also be capable of any evil – incapable of seeing that it is evil. Only an act of liberation, not instruction,
can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that
in most cases genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation
has preceded it. Until then, we must abandon all attempts to
convince the stupid person. Bonhoeffer died due to his involvement in
a plot against Adolf Hitler at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp just
two weeks before soldiers from the United States liberated the camp. “Action springs not from thought, but from
a readiness for responsibility. The ultimate test of a moral society is the
kind of world that it leaves to its children.” Bonhoeffer once said. Check the description below to read Bonhoeffer’s
original text, “After Ten Years” For more information about Bonhoeffer or to
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