Fascinating - I just listened to Rufus Fears' lecture on Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison before opening HN.
Personally, I find Bonhoeffer's premises are easily accepted - 1) stupidity is not an intellectual defect and 2) stupidity as a more dangerous adversary than malice. It follows that liberation, not instruction, is necessary to overcome stupidity. "The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity."
What I don't align with is the consequence that "stupidity surpasses malice in its danger." Malice, and only intentional malice, is the evil that was present in his day and remains so. I think there's an inherent snobbishness of modern philosophy readers who have a surface relation to this axiom, thinking that it means that, "oh, everyone is just stupid and unmotivated towards learning, and that's why I'm better than them."
Personally, I find Bonhoeffer's premises are easily accepted - 1) stupidity is not an intellectual defect and 2) stupidity as a more dangerous adversary than malice. It follows that liberation, not instruction, is necessary to overcome stupidity. "The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity."
What I don't align with is the consequence that "stupidity surpasses malice in its danger." Malice, and only intentional malice, is the evil that was present in his day and remains so. I think there's an inherent snobbishness of modern philosophy readers who have a surface relation to this axiom, thinking that it means that, "oh, everyone is just stupid and unmotivated towards learning, and that's why I'm better than them."