The Importance of Understanding Human Equality

Although respect for equal human dignity is an inspiration for many, it is still politically and culturally a frail growth needing constant protection.

One of the greatest threats to that protection lies in the failure to understand the idea of “human equality,” which issues not just into blinkered outlooks, but into harmful actions.

It is important to differentiate, however, two kinds of “failure to understand.”

A first kind consists of an inability to understand that “all persons are equal”—an inability to reach up to the insights that make this idea plausible and convincing.

Another is the refusal to understand that persons are equal in basic dignity. This occurs when persons who are capable of the relevant insights turn away from the illumination they provide, and who thus culpably remain ignorant of an obligation to respect human equality.

It seems to me that this culpable failure of intelligence, as an ineluctable factor in both the mystery of existence (“why are things as they are?”) and the mystery of iniquity (the mystery of moral evil), is insufficiently emphasized in contemporary culture—defining “culture,” following Lonergan, as “the set of meanings and values that inform a way of life.” If this is in fact so, why is it the case?

To start with, every culture’s “informing values” include negative judgments that identify certain attitudes, actions, ideas, and language as embarrassing, offensive, or pernicious. (Consider the “warning labels” pertaining to the contents of films: “the following contains violence, nudity, bad language, smoking…”). And in our current culture, two ideas or words that cause unease, at least in some circles (notably in the world of education), are those of mystery, in the sense of a metaphysical truth or reality known to be impenetrable by human reason; and stupidity, in the sense of an inexplicable refusal on the part of someone who is definitely, even unusually, intelligent to have particular insights.

(As a general term of abuse, of course, “stupidity” remains exceedingly popular.)

But how many terms are available to us to refer to this culpable failure of understanding—a crucial phenomenon in human life? Stupidity in this sense is a precise descriptor with few or no synonyms. (One might be folly.)

There is such a thing, then, as a culpable exercise of stupidity; and it can occur with regard to insights minor or major—indeed, sometimes of very major significance.

For instance, when a person has sufficient relevant data and sufficient intelligence but willfully refuses insight into the intelligibility of “equal human dignity,” as this is referred to in documents and constitutions outlining rights that apply equally to all persons irrespective of race, ethnicity, nationality, religious belief, gender, age, and condition, then this failure to understand what could be understood, and ought to be understood, leads not just to a minor deformation of intellect but to a major deformation of character.

Further, refusals of insight into equality can serve as a psychological bond between those who share, partly on their basis, an outlook, a worldview, a political ideology—and the impact of such a bond, and the force it helps to create, may extend well beyond a local warping of cultural values.

This is a topic that has occasionally received philosophical attention—and the clearest treatment of stupidity in the sense of culpable ignorance of which I am aware is that of the Austrian novelist Robert Musil.

In March, 1937, Musil gave a lecture in Vienna titled “On Stupidity.” The lecture begins with the assertion that there is a deep need, at present, to “recover” correct ideas about human freedom, reason, and dignity; and that success in this venture depends on understanding certain mental aberrations which undermine the healthy appreciation of these ideas in society. Therefore, it continues, “a question gradually arises that refuses to be put off: Just what is stupidity?”

Musil lays out his answer as follows.

The undifferentiated idea that “stupidity” is simply “a lesser degree of intelligence,” attributable only to a failure in the “faculty of reason,” yields to greater clarity when psychological analysis explains that, and how, there is an interdependence among all the operations belonging to consciousness. In short: it is misleading to found the study of consciousness on a schema of discrete “faculties” (reason / emotion/ volition), because, in psychological fact, inquiry and feelings and imagination and understanding and judgment and evaluation and decision are complexly intertwined and continually influencing each other in the unfolding of consciousness.

Consideration of this fact leads Musil to make a distinction between two types of stupidity. There is, as we all know, he says, an “honorable and straightforward stupidity.” But there is also a second type, which “paradoxically, is even a sign of intelligence.” The first is a simply a “weakness of understanding”; the second, an understanding that is weak only with regard to some particulars; “and this latter kind is by far the more dangerous.” Why so?

Because this stupidity is that of a person who could, with respect to critical moral and spiritual matters, achieve insights, engage in sound reasoning, and apprehend genuine values, but who avoids insights about these particulars. This kind of stupidity, Musil, states, is “dishonorable, devious, intelligent, and dangerous.” Furthermore, it “can appear at the highest levels of social and political power, and can have a broad influence in the shaping of culture—even in the guidance of political or military affairs of state.”

Musil calls this kind of stupidity “intelligent stupidity,” and focuses on three of its characteristics. First, it presumes to insights and accomplishments that actually lie beyond its reach. Second, it is oriented by feelings that overrule reason in a way that creates blind spots in intellectual, moral, and spiritual perspective. And third, it is endlessly inventive in using its outstanding intelligence to produce convincing rationalizations for its viewpoints and actions.

This stupidity is the “real disease of culture,” Musil says; “it reaches into the highest intellectual sphere,” and “it is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth.” It is “no mental illness,” yet “it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself.”

“Life itself?”

Given the time and place of Musil’s lecture (Vienna, 1937) there is no doubt about the targets of his critical diagnosis. The most proximate is the rise to power and appeal of National Socialism in Germany, with its aberrant vision of a revivifying and unifying culture based on race, blood, and soil—a vision with no lack of support in intellectual circles. The second, more generally, is the rise of totalitarian ideologies, whether in National Socialist, Fascist, or Soviet forms.

Musil is alluding to the tremendous resources of intelligence and inventiveness at the disposal of powerful leaders whose minds are diseased. Not that they are “mentally ill” in a traditional psychopathological sense. And they are certainly not “stupid” in the simple and honorable sense.

Musil is distinguishing a type of stupidity characterized by a distorted use of genuine and energetic intelligence which makes sweeping and arrogant claims regarding knowledge of matters of ultimate concern—unwarranted claims arising from a lethal mixture of emotions unchecked by critical reason and moral blind spots (i.e., absences of insight), leading to a catastrophic disorientation that is culpable because it could have been avoided.

Such stupidity obviously pertains less to intellect, Musil concludes, than to the whole of consciousness itself. “Intelligent stupidity,” he says, “has as its adversary not so much the understanding as the spirit [Geist], [and] the sensibility [Gemüt] as well.”

The relevance to contemporary culture and politics of Musil’s analysis of “intelligent stupidity”—to the failures of some of those in positions of political and cultural power to grasp the spiritual principle of human equality, and to be guided in action by a respect for equal human dignity and its embodiment in democratic self-determination—is obvious.

It would be obvious at any time in history.

But then, at one’s own point in history, one is always tempted to say: “But look! It is especially obvious now!”

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