Grand theory can be used to rationalize refusing concrete individual help.

Evidence

Distrust all those who claim that help can only be given either to everyone at once or not at all. This is the lie which is lived by those who do not in fact want to help, and who talk themselves out of their duties in particular individual cases by means of grand theory. They are rationalizing their inhumanity.’ He had once described pity as an appropriate present-day form of morality alongside politics. And he was a supporter of Schopenhauer, for whom to be healed of the illusions of Maya and to practice works of love were one and the same thing. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1109

Categorization

• APHORISMS: A concrete life-rule: suspicion of those who defer help to universal schemes while doing nothing in particular cases. Reads as genuine advice against grand-theory evasion of duty.
• XREF: connects to: Theory is assumed abstract the more it drags away from the personal; Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366; Theory is needed to break through deceptive appearances but cannot dictate action

Broader Connections

• Theory is needed to break through deceptive appearances but cannot dictate action #complicates (0.85)
• Theory is assumed abstract the more it drags away from the personal #corroborates (0.80)
• Rationality itself can be weaponized against the rational agent #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 366