UNDERSTANDING ANIIl POLITICS
383
methodically the unprecedented from precedents, even though such
a description of the new phenomena may be demonstrably at variance
with the reality. Is not understanding so closely related to and inter–
related with judging that one must describe both as the subsumption
(of something particular under a universal rule) which according to
Kant is the very definition of judgment, whose absence he so magnifi–
cently defined as "stupidity," an "infirmity beyond remedy"?
These questions are all the more pertinent as they are not
r~
stricted to our perplexity in understanding totalitarianism. The
paradox of the modern situation seems to be that our need to trans–
cend preliminary understanding and the strictly scientific approach
springs from the fact that we have lost our tools of understanding.
Our quest for meaning is at the same time prompted and frustrated
by our inability to originate meaning. Kant's definition of stupidity
is
by no means beside the point. Since the beginning of this century,
the growth of meaninglessness has been accompanied by loss of com–
mon sense. In many respects, this has appeared simply as an increasing
stupidity. We know of no civilization before ours in which people
were gullible enough to form their buying habits in accordance with
the maxim that "self-praise is the highest recommendation," the
assumption of
all
advertising. Nor is it likely that any century be–
fore ours could have been persuaded to take seriously a therapy which
is
said to help only
if
the patients pay a lot of money to those who
administer it-except there exists a primitive society where the hand–
ing over of money itself possesses magical power.
What has happened to the clever little rules of self-interest has
happened on a much larger scale to
all
the spheres of ordinary life
which, because they are ordinary, need to be regulated by customs.
Totalitarian phenomena which can no longer be understood in
terms of common sense and which defy all rules of "normal," that
is chiefly utilitarian judgment, are only the most spectacular instances
of the breakdown of our common inherited wisdom. From the point
of view of common sense, we did not need the rise of totalitarianism
to show us that we are living in a topsy-turvy world, a world where
we cannot find our way by .abiding by the rules of what once was
common sense. In this situation, stupidity in the Kantian sense has
become the infirmity of everybody, and therefore can no longer be
regarded as "beyond remedy." Stupidity
has
become as common as
