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Document Details : Title: Robert Musil et les paradoxes de la bêtise Author(s): BONNET, Christian Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 84 Issue: 4 Date: 2022 Pages: 633-649 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.84.4.3291531 Abstract : Musil’s 1937 lecture 'On Stupidity' in Vienna leads us to revise the common definition of stupidity as a lack of intelligence. Stupidity would rather be a disturbed relationship between intelligence and feeling, a disharmony between the demands of feeling and an understanding that is unable to restrain it. Hence a form of panic, self-dissolution and depersonalisation of the subject who ends up saying and doing anything. Musil distinguishes between two forms of stupidity. Honest, simple stupidity can be pleasant and can even have an artistic dimension. Superior, pretentious stupidity, which is often paradoxically a sign of intelligence, is the most dangerous and threatens life itself. Stupidity can also be collective. The events of the 1930s give Musil the feeling that the whole of society is in the grip of a form of self-dissolution and collective stupidity. Far from any theory of stupidity that would pretend to save the world, Musil invites us to work on ourselves and reminds us that the best weapon against stupidity is modesty. |
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