Stupidity enables openness and receptivity while unintelligence merely limits experience

Evidence

In his treatise on idiocy, Clément Rosset explicitly distinguishes stupidity (sottise) from unintelligence (inintelligence). In so doing, he ascribes a creative potential to stupidity: ‘Stupidity … is generally assimilated to unintelligence, which is deemed the opposite of intelligence. This means opposing attentive, nimble, and alert intelligence to stupidity, which is understood as sluggish, anesthetic, and mummified … In fact, there is nothing so attentive, nimble, and alert as stupidity’ (Le Réel. Traité de l’idiotie [Paris: Minuit, 1977], 144). Boundless openness and receptivity distinguish stupidity, whereas lack of intelligence means limitation. Unintelligence is poor in experience. It has no access to the event: ‘Unintelligence closes doors: it signals that certain paths of approach to such or such knowledge are prohibited, thereby narrowing the field of experience.’ In contrast, ‘stupidity opens onto everything: it makes anything at all into an object of notice and possible engagement.’ It is a ‘calling, or better, a priesthood, with its idols, officiants, and faithful’ (145). — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 253

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Han’s broader argument elsewhere about praise of the active, intelligent self — Rosset’s defense of stupidity as receptivity echoes Han’s own critique of the neoliberal performance subject contrasted against quiet receptivity. — connects to: Complicated cleverness can be worse than simple sense — , A Year of World Stories, 5572; Stupidity is a scar left where curiosity or impulse was crushed by coercion — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 266; Stupidity is a social product, not a natural capacity — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 120 (+1 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: rehabilitating ‘stupidity’ or naive openness as a cognitive virtue against the data-driven ‘smartness’ of the neoliberal subject.

Broader Connections

• Stupidity is a scar left where curiosity or impulse was crushed by coercion #complicates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 266
• Complicated cleverness can be worse than simple sense #expands (0.75) — , A Year of World Stories, 5572
• Stupidity is a social product, not a natural capacity #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 120
• Open-mindedness is impossible because thought requires preexisting categories #complicates (0.72)