Eric Voegelin on "Stupidity"

Voegelin and stupidity:

"The idea of man is not a question of arbitrary definitions, rather, man is discovered in quite specific historic places and in quite concrete situations. In the Hellenic society, man was experienced by the philosophers of the classical period as a being who is constituted by the nous, by reason. In the Israelite society man is experienced as the being to whom God speaks his word, that is, as a pneumatic being who is open to God's word. Reason and spirit are the two modes of constitution of man. This world itself exists by reason of a mystery, and the cause of this being of the world, of which man is component, we call 'God'.

"One cannot dedivinze himself without dehumanizing himself, because to do so is to close off oneself to the divine, whether it be the rationally divine or the pneumatically divine, that is, the philosophical or revelational divine. In both cases there occurs a loss of reality. Typically, the reality of man is put in the place of the lost divine reality, which alone grounds the reality of man, so that in place of the ground of being as the cause of being, man as the cause of being advances to the point of exaggeration in the idea that man must be the creator of the world. There you have in a nutshell the problem of Hitler- 'The world shall be as I wish it!' Stupidity here shall mean 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.

"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. 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.To be a leader, one must be in a position of power, administer the law with religious conscientiousness, and defend the faith. That is, he must rule by power, reason, and spirit. The problem of Hitler is that he ruled with power that allowed society to exist, but he did not represent reason or spirit. – Voegelin

Voegelin's Division of Man (derived from Aristotle who derived from Hesiod):Those who have authority (led by his own nous, by reason- Aristotle; who himself considers or thinks through all things, who can advise himself, possesses nous- openness toward the divine ground of being- Hesiod)Those who can follow authority (those still being educated; those who never get beyond certain educational levels but at least are still approachable insofar as they listen when a wiser man tells them what is right and what is wrong- Aristotle; who listens to the best- Hesiod)Those who 'rabble' (slave by nature- Aristotle; those who neither thinks nor listens, the “useless man”)Political problem- the 'rabble' in high levels of government.