A Popular Form of Monomania

The October issue of New Criterion features a lengthy and timely essay from our skeptical doctor.

Thus intellectualization of a certain kind can promote the dulling of normal moral sensibilities. Even more than political language (as analyzed in Orwell’s essay), ideology is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, indeed to make lies the proclaimed truth from which all dissent is impermissible, and murder a duty.

2 thoughts on “A Popular Form of Monomania

  1. William Murphy

    My favourite examples in the question of “intelligence is necessary to be good” would be the SS Einsatzgruppen commanders who conducted mass killings in Russia in WW2. Three out of the four had university doctorates. Otto Rasch was known as Dr Dr Rasch because he had two doctorates. His Einsatzgruppe killed 33,000 Jews near Kiev in 1941. Plainly intelligence is not enough.

    Reply
    1. Barbellion

      Perhaps those shouldn’t be your favorite examples: they aren’t at all germane to the question, which concerns necessary conditions rather than those which are sufficient in themselves.

      Reply

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