The Cyclops’ stupidity and lawlessness are the same mental deficiency

Evidence

Stupidity and lawlessness are diagnosed as one: when Homer calls the Cyclops a “lawless-minded monster,” this does not mean merely that in his mind he does not respect the laws of civilization, but also that his mind itself, his thinking, is lawless, unsystematic, and rhapsodical, for he cannot solve the bourgeois mental problem of the way in which his uninvited guests can escape from the cave (by clinging to the rams’ bellies instead of riding on their backs) and does not see through the sophistic double-entendre of Odysseus’ false name. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 69

Categorization

• DEFINE: Adorno collapses the moral and cognitive meanings of ‘lawless’ into one: an unsystematized mind cannot see strategic solutions or linguistic trickery.