Thoughts on war: Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Von der Dummheit [“About Stupidity“] (1943) (Published on 06/05/2025)
(Source: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widerstand und Ergebung. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (1951), p. 17 – 20 [translation from German language])
In 1943, during his imprisonment by the National Socialists, Bonhoeffer timelessly commented on the political significance of stupidity as follows:
“About Stupidity
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of goodness than evil. Evil can be protested against, it can be exposed, it can be prevented by force if necessary, evil always carries the seed of self-destruction in that it leaves at least one feeling of unease in people. We are defenceless against stupidity. Neither protests nor violence can achieve anything here; reasons are ineffective; facts that contradict one’s own prejudices need simply not be believed – in such cases the stupid even become critical – and if they are unavoidable, they can simply be brushed aside as meaningless isolated cases. In contrast to the wicked, the stupid person is completely satisfied with himself; indeed, he even becomes dangerous by becoming easily irritated and going on the attack. Therefore, we should be more careful with the stupid than with the evil. We will never again try to convince the stupid by reasoning; it is pointless and dangerous.
In order to know how we can get to grips with stupidity, we must try to understand its nature. This much is certain: it is not essentially an intellectual defect, but a human one. There are intellectually extraordinarily agile people who are stupid and intellectually very slow-witted people who are anything but stupid. We make this discovery to our surprise in certain situations. We get the impression not so much that stupidity is an innate defect, but that under certain circumstances people are made stupid or allow themselves to be made stupid. We also observe that people who live in isolation and in solitude show this defect less frequently than people and groups of people who tend to socialize or are convicted. So perhaps stupidity seems to be less of a psychological problem than a sociological one.
It is a special form of the influence of historical circumstances on people, a psychological side effect of certain external conditions. A closer look reveals that every strong external development of power, be it political or religious, strikes a large proportion of people with stupidity. Indeed, it seems as if this is almost a sociological-psychological law. The power of some needs the stupidity of others. The process here is not that certain – for example, intellectual – human dispositions suddenly atrophy or fail, but that under the overwhelming impression of the development of power, people are robbed of their inner independence and now – more or less unconsciously – refrain from finding their own behavior in the resulting life situations.
The fact that a stupid person is often stubborn should not hide the fact that he is not independent. When talking to him, you can almost feel that you are not dealing with him, with him personally, but with slogans, paroles etc. that have become powerful through him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, he has been abused and mistreated in his own being. Having thus become a will-less instrument, the stupid person will also be capable of all evil and at the same time incapable of recognizing this as evil. This is the danger of diabolical abuse. As a result, people can be ruined forever.
But it is also very clear here that it is not an act of teaching, but only an act of liberation that could overcome stupidity. We will have to come to terms with the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, genuine inner liberation is only possible after external liberation has taken place; until then, we will have to abandon all attempts to convince the stupid. Incidentally, this situation also explains why, under such circumstances, we try in vain to find out what ‘the people’ actually think and why this question is so superfluous for those who think and act responsibly – always only under the given circumstances. The word of the Bible, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, says that the inner liberation of man to live responsibly before God is the only real overcoming of stupidity.
Incidentally, these thoughts about stupidity are comforting in that they do not allow the majority of people to be considered stupid under any circumstances. It will really depend on whether those in power expect more from stupidity or from people’s inner independence and intelligence.”
Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born on 04/02/1906 in Breslau, was executed on 09/04/1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was part of the German resistance against National Socialism.
(Head picture:
German military cemetery Ysselsteyn/Netherlands, May 2023)
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