Evil

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism

In many Abrahamic religions, demons are considered to be evil beings and are contrasted with angels, who are their good contemporaries.

Evil, as a concept, is usually defined as profoundly immoral behavior, and it is related to acts that cause unnecessary pain and suffering to others.

Evil is commonly seen as the opposite, or sometimes absence, of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, although in everyday usage it is often more narrowly used to talk about profound wickedness and against common good. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or supernatural/eternal. While some religions, world views, and philosophies focus on "good versus evil", others deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people.

Evil can denote profound immorality, but typically not without some basis in the understanding of the human condition, where strife and suffering (cf. Hinduism) are the true roots of evil. In certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force. Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives. Elements that are commonly associated with personal forms of evil involve unbalanced behavior, including anger, revenge, hatred, injustice, psychological trauma, expediency, selfishness, pride, ignorance, jealousy, prejudice, destruction, and neglect.

In some forms of thought, evil is also sometimes perceived in absolute terms as the dualistic antagonistic binary opposite to good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated. In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Nirvana. The ethical questions regarding good and evil are subsumed into three major areas of study: meta-ethics, concerning the nature of good and evil; normative ethics, concerning how we ought to behave; and applied ethics, concerning particular moral issues. While the term is applied to events and conditions without agency, the forms of evil addressed in this article presume one or more evildoers.

Etymology

The modern English word evil (Old English yfel) and its cognates such as the German Übel and Dutch euvel are widely considered to come from a Proto-Germanic reconstructed form of *ubilaz, comparable to the Hittite huwapp- ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European form *wap- and suffixed zero-grade form *up-elo-. Other later Germanic forms include Middle English evel, ifel, ufel, Old Frisian evel (adjective and noun), Old Saxon ubil, Old High German ubil, and Gothic ubils.

Chinese moral philosophy

Main articles: Confucius § Ethics, Confucianism, and Taoism § Ethics

Evil is translated as 惡 in Chinese. The duty of the emperor and of his officials is to restrain it, thus preserving the cosmic order.

The nature of good and evil was also ascertainable by natural faculties without the need for revelation—"one will not achieve a perfect perception of good and evil if one has not exactly examined the nature and reason of things."

Offenses against the Three Bonds and the Five Constants

Chinese cosmology, moral philosophy and law regard offenses against the Five Constants with particular abhorrence—anything that diminished the proper relationship between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger, and between mutual friends was a violation of the cosmic order and heinous. Anything that went against the Way embedded in the order of human relationships was considered vile, and invited the displeasure of Heaven and ghosts, who were seen as inflicting retribution through the instrumentality of legal punishments on earth. Chinese moral and legal philosophy views the violation of family and kinship order with particular abhorrence, considering it especially heinous. In assessing the degree of evil, not only the severity of the effect against the life, health or dignity of a person is considered, but also the relational distance.

Ten Abominations ("十惡")

The Ming Legal Code identified Ten Abominations—categories of prohibited conduct so abhorrent and heinous that the usual considerations of pardon would not apply—these include plotting rebellion, great sedition, treason, parricide, depravity (the murder of three or more innocent persons or the use of magical curses), great irreverence (lèse-majesté), lack of filial piety, discord, unrighteousness and incest (fornication with relatives of fourth degree of mourning or less, or relationships with one's father's wife and concubines).

Other views

As with Buddhism, in Confucianism or Taoism there is no direct analogue to the way good and evil are opposed although reference to demonic influence is common in Chinese folk religion. Confucianism's primary concern is with correct social relationships and the behavior appropriate to the learned or superior man. Thus evil would correspond to wrong behavior. Still less does it map into Taoism, in spite of the centrality of dualism in that system, but the opposite of the cardinal virtues of Taoism, compassion, moderation, and humility can be inferred to be the analogue of evil in it.

European philosophy

In response to the practices of Nazi Germany, Hannah Arendt concluded that "the problem of evil would be the fundamental problem of postwar intellectual life in Europe", although such a focus did not come to fruition.

Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza states

1. By good, I understand that which we certainly know is useful to us.
2. By evil, on the contrary, I understand that which we certainly know hinders us from possessing anything that is good.

Spinoza assumes a quasi-mathematical style and states these further propositions which he purports to prove or demonstrate from the above definitions in part IV of his Ethics:

• Proposition 8 "Knowledge of good or evil is nothing but affect of joy or sorrow in so far as we are conscious of it."
• Proposition 30 "Nothing can be evil through that which it possesses in common with our nature, but in so far as a thing is evil to us it is contrary to us."
• Proposition 64 "The knowledge of evil is inadequate knowledge."
  • Corollary "Hence it follows that if the human mind had none but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil."
• Proposition 65 "According to the guidance of reason, of two things which are good, we shall follow the greater good, and of two evils, follow the less."
• Proposition 68 "If men were born free, they would form no conception of good and evil so long as they were free."

Psychology

Carl Jung

Carl Jung, in his book Answer to Job and elsewhere, depicted evil as the dark side of God. People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others. Jung interpreted the story of Jesus as an account of God facing his own shadow.

Philip Zimbardo

In 2007, Philip Zimbardo suggested that people may act in evil ways as a result of a collective identity. This hypothesis, based on his previous experience from the Stanford prison experiment, was published in the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.

Milgram experiment

Main article: Milgram experiment

In 1961, Stanley Milgram began an experiment to help explain how thousands of ordinary, non-deviant, people could have reconciled themselves to a role in the Holocaust. Participants were led to believe they were assisting in an unrelated experiment in which they had to inflict electric shocks on another person. The experiment unexpectedly found that most could be led to inflict the electric shocks, including shocks that would have been fatal if they had been real. The participants tended to be uncomfortable and reluctant in the role. Nearly all stopped at some point to question the experiment, but most continued after being reassured.

A 2014 re-assessment of Milgram's work argued that the results should be interpreted with the "engaged followership" model: that people are not simply obeying the orders of a leader, but instead are willing to continue the experiment because of their desire to support the scientific goals of the leader and because of a lack of identification with the learner. Thomas Blass argues that the experiment explains how people can be complicit in roles such as "the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven". However, like James Waller, he argues that it cannot explain an event like the Holocaust. Unlike the perpetrators of the Holocaust, the participants in Milgram's experiment were reassured that their actions would cause little harm and had little time to contemplate their actions.

Religions

Abrahamic

Baháʼí Faith

The Baháʼí Faith asserts that evil is non-existent and that it is a concept reflecting lack of good, just as cold is the state of no heat, darkness is the state of no light, forgetfulness the lacking of memory, ignorance the lacking of knowledge. All of these are states of lacking and have no real existence.

Thus, evil does not exist and is relative to man. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, son of the founder of the religion, in Some Answered Questions states:

Nevertheless, a doubt occurs to the mind—that is, scorpions and serpents are poisonous. Are they good or evil, for they are existing beings? Yes, a scorpion is evil in relation to man; a serpent is evil in relation to man; but in relation to themselves they are not evil, for their poison is their weapon, and by their sting they defend themselves.

Thus, evil is more of an intellectual concept than a true reality. Since God is good, and upon creating creation he confirmed it by saying it is Good (Genesis 1:31) evil cannot have a true reality.

Christianity

See also: Devil in Christianity

The devil, in opposition to the will of God, represents evil and tempts Christ, the personification of the character and will of God. Ary Scheffer, 1854.

Christian theology draws its concept of evil from the Old and New Testaments. The Christian Bible exercises "the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world." In the Old Testament, evil is understood to be an opposition to God as well as something unsuitable or inferior such as the leader of the fallen angels Satan. In the New Testament the Greek word poneros is used to indicate unsuitability, while kakos is used to refer to opposition to God in the human realm. Officially, the Catholic Church extracts its understanding of evil from its canonical antiquity and the Dominican theologian, Thomas Aquinas, who in Summa Theologica defines evil as the absence or privation of good. French-American theologian Henri Blocher describes evil, when viewed as a theological concept, as an "unjustifiable reality. In common parlance, evil is 'something' that occurs in the experience that ought not to be."

Islam

See also: Islamic views on sin

There is no concept of absolute evil in Islam, as a fundamental universal principle that is independent from and equal with good in a dualistic sense. Although the Quran mentions the biblical forbidden tree, it never refers to it as the 'tree of knowledge of good and evil'. Within Islam, it is considered essential to believe that all comes from God, whether it is perceived as good or bad by individuals; and things that are perceived as evil or bad are either natural events (natural disasters or illnesses) or caused by humanity's free will. Much more the behavior of beings with free will, then they disobey God's orders, harming others or putting themselves over God or others, is considered to be evil. Evil does not necessarily refer to evil as an ontological or moral category, but often to harm or as the intention and consequence of an action, but also to unlawful actions. Unproductive actions or those who do not produce benefits are also thought of as evil.

A typical understanding of evil is reflected by Al-Ash'ari, founder of Ash'arism. Accordingly, qualifying something as evil depends on the circumstances of the observer. An event or an action itself is neutral, but it receives its qualification by God. Since God is omnipotent and nothing can exist outside of God's power, God determines whether or not something is evil.

Rabbinic Judaism

See also: Satan in Judaism

In Judaism and Jewish theology, the existence of evil is presented as part of the idea of free will: if humans were created to be perfect, always and only doing good, being good would not mean much. For Jewish theology, it is important for humans to have the ability to choose the path of goodness, even in the face of temptation and yetzer hara (the inclination to do evil).

Ancient Egyptian

Further information: Ancient Egyptian religion

Evil in the religion of ancient Egypt is known as Isfet, "disorder/violence". It is the opposite of Maat, "order", and embodied by the serpent god Apep, who routinely attempts to kill the sun god Ra and is stopped by nearly every other deity. Isfet is not a primordial force, but the consequence of free will and an individual's struggle against the non-existence embodied by Apep, as evidenced by the fact that it was born from Ra's umbilical cord instead of being recorded in the religion's creation myths.

Indian

Buddhism

Main article: Buddhist ethics

One of the five paintings of Extermination of Evil portrays one of the eight guardians of Buddhist law, Sendan Kendatsuba, banishing evil.

The primal duality in Buddhism is between suffering and enlightenment, so the good vs. evil splitting has no direct analogue in it. One may infer from the general teachings of the Buddha that the catalogued causes of suffering are what correspond in this belief system to 'evil'.

Practically this can refer to 1) the three selfish emotions—desire, hate and delusion; and 2) to their expression in physical and verbal actions. Specifically, evil means whatever harms or obstructs the causes for happiness in this life, a better rebirth, liberation from samsara, and the true and complete enlightenment of a buddha (samyaksambodhi).

"What is evil? Killing is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil: envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil; all these things are evil. And what is the root of evil? Desire is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil." Gautama Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism, 563–483 BC.

Hinduism

In Hinduism, the concept of Dharma or righteousness clearly divides the world into good and evil, and clearly explains that wars have to be waged sometimes to establish and protect Dharma, this war is called Dharmayuddha. This division of good and evil is of major importance in both the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata. The main emphasis in Hinduism is on bad action, rather than bad people. The Hindu holy text, the Bhagavad Gita, speaks of the balance of good and evil. When this balance goes off, divine incarnations come to help to restore this balance.

Sikhism

In adherence to the core principle of spiritual evolution, the Sikh idea of evil changes depending on one's position on the path to liberation. At the beginning stages of spiritual growth, good and evil may seem neatly separated. Once one's spirit evolves to the point where it sees most clearly, the idea of evil vanishes and the truth is revealed. In his writings Guru Arjan explains that, because God is the source of all things, what we believe to be evil must too come from God. And because God is ultimately a source of absolute good, nothing truly evil can originate from God.

Sikhism, like many other religions, does incorporate a list of "vices" from which suffering, corruption, and abject negativity arise. These are known as the Five Thieves, called such due to their propensity to cloud the mind and lead one astray from the prosecution of righteous action. These are:

• Moh, or Attachment
• Lobh, or Greed
• Karodh, or Wrath
• Kaam, or Lust
• Ahankar, or Egotism

One who gives in to the temptations of the Five Thieves is known as "Manmukh", or someone who lives selfishly and without virtue. Inversely, the "Gurmukh, who thrive in their reverence toward divine knowledge, rise above vice via the practice of the high virtues of Sikhism. These are:

• Sewa, or selfless service to others.
• Nam Simran, or meditation upon the divine name.

Question of a universal definition

A fundamental question is whether there is a universal, transcendent definition of evil, or whether one's definition of evil is determined by one's social or cultural background. C. S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, maintained that there are certain acts that are universally considered evil, such as rape and murder. However, the rape of women, by men, is found in every society, and there are more societies that see at least some versions of it, such as marital rape or punitive rape, as normative than there are societies that see all rape as non-normative (a crime). In nearly all societies, killing except for defense or duty is seen as murder. Yet the definition of defense and duty varies from one society to another. Social deviance is not uniformly defined across different cultures, and is not, in all circumstances, necessarily an aspect of evil.

Defining evil is complicated by its multiple, often ambiguous, common usages: evil is used to describe the whole range of suffering, including that caused by nature, and it is also used to describe the full range of human immorality from the "evil of genocide to the evil of malicious gossip". It is sometimes thought of as the generic opposite of good. Marcus Singer asserts that these common connotations must be set aside as overgeneralized ideas that do not sufficiently describe the nature of evil.

In contemporary philosophy, there are two basic concepts of evil: a broad concept and a narrow concept. A broad concept defines evil simply as any and all pain and suffering: "any bad state of affairs, wrongful action, or character flaw". Yet, it is also asserted that evil cannot be correctly understood "(as some of the utilitarians once thought) [on] a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus". This is because pain is necessary for survival. Renowned orthopedist and missionary to lepers, Dr. Paul Brand explains that leprosy attacks the nerve cells that feel pain resulting in no more pain for the leper, which leads to ever increasing, often catastrophic, damage to the body of the leper. Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia, is a neurological disorder that prevents feeling pain. It "leads to ... bone fractures, multiple scars, osteomyelitis, joint deformities, and limb amputation ... Mental retardation is common. Death from hyperpyrexia occurs within the first 3 years of life in almost 20% of the patients." Few with the disorder are able to live into adulthood. Evil cannot be simply defined as all pain and its connected suffering because, as Marcus Singer says: "If something is really evil, it can't be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can't be evil".

The narrow concept of evil involves moral condemnation, therefore it is ascribed only to moral agents and their actions. This eliminates natural disasters and animal suffering from consideration as evil: according to Claudia Card, "When not guided by moral agents, forces of nature are neither "goods" nor "evils". They just are. Their "agency" routinely produces consequences vital to some forms of life and lethal to others". The narrow definition of evil "picks out only the most morally despicable sorts of actions, characters, events, etc. Evil [in this sense] ... is the worst possible term of opprobrium imaginable". Eve Garrard suggests that evil describes "particularly horrifying kinds of action which we feel are to be contrasted with more ordinary kinds of wrongdoing, as when for example we might say 'that action wasn't just wrong, it was positively evil'. The implication is that there is a qualitative, and not merely quantitative, difference between evil acts and other wrongful ones; evil acts are not just very bad or wrongful acts, but rather ones possessing some specially horrific quality". In this context, the concept of evil is one element in a full nexus of moral concepts.

Philosophical questions

Approaches

Main article: Ethics

Views on the nature of evil belong to the branch of philosophy known as ethics—which in modern philosophy is subsumed into three major areas of study:

1. Meta-ethics, that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments.
2. Normative ethics, investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking.
3. Applied ethics, concerned with the analysis of particular moral issues in private and public life.

Usefulness as a term

There is debate on how useful the term "evil" is, since it is often associated with spirits and the devil. Some see the term as useless because they say it lacks any real ability to explain what it names. There is also real danger of the harm that being labeled "evil" can do when used in moral, political, and legal contexts. Those who support the usefulness of the term say there is a secular view of evil that offers plausible analyses without reference to the supernatural Garrard and Russell argue that evil is as useful an explanation as any moral concept. Garrard adds that evil actions result from a particular kind of motivation, such as taking pleasure in the suffering of others, and this distinctive motivation provides a partial explanation even if it does not provide a complete explanation. Most theorists agree use of the term evil can be harmful but disagree over what response that requires. Some argue it is "more dangerous to ignore evil than to try to understand it".

Those who support the usefulness of the term, such as Eve Garrard and David McNaughton, argue that the term evil "captures a distinct part of our moral phenomenology, specifically, 'collect[ing] together those wrongful actions to which we have ... a response of moral horror'." Claudia Card asserts it is only by understanding the nature of evil that we can preserve humanitarian values and prevent evil in the future. If evils are the worst sorts of moral wrongs, social policy should focus limited energy and resources on reducing evil over other wrongs. Card asserts that by categorizing certain actions and practices as evil, we are better able to recognize and guard against responding to evil with more evil which will "interrupt cycles of hostility generated by past evils".

One school of thought holds that no person is evil and that only acts may be properly considered evil. Some theorists define an evil action simply as a kind of action an evil person performs, but just as many theorists believe that an evil character is one who is inclined toward evil acts. Luke Russell argues that both evil actions and evil feelings are necessary to identify a person as evil, while Daniel Haybron argues that evil feelings and evil motivations are necessary.

American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes evil as a kind of personal "militant ignorance". According to Peck, an evil person is consistently self-deceiving, deceives others, psychologically projects his or her evil onto very specific targets, hates, abuses power, and lies incessantly. Evil people are unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim. Peck considers those he calls evil to be attempting to escape and hide from their own conscience (through self-deception) and views this as being quite distinct from the apparent absence of conscience evident in sociopaths. He also considers that certain institutions may be evil, using the My Lai massacre to illustrate. By this definition, acts of criminal and state terrorism would also be considered evil.

Necessity

Main article: Necessary evil

Martin Luther believed that occasional minor evil could have a positive effect.

Martin Luther argued that there are cases where a little evil is a positive good. He wrote, "Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, talk bawdy, and amuse yourself. One must sometimes commit a sin out of hate and contempt for the Devil, so as not to give him the chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings ..."

The international relations theories of realism and neorealism, sometimes called realpolitik advise politicians to explicitly ban absolute moral and ethical considerations from international politics, and to focus on self-interest, political survival, and power politics, which they hold to be more accurate in explaining a world they view as explicitly amoral and dangerous. Political realists usually justify their perspectives by stating that morals and politics should be separated as two unrelated things, as exerting authority often involves doing something not moral. Machiavelli wrote that "one should not care about incurring the fame of those vices without which it is difficult to save one's state; for if one considers everything well, one will find something appears to be virtue, which if pursued would be one's ruin, and something else appears to be vice, which if pursued results in one's security and well-being."

Anti-intellectualism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism contrasts the reedy scholar with the bovine boxer; the comparison epitomizes the populist view of reading and study as antithetical to sport and athleticism. Note the disproportionate heads and bodies, with the size of the head representing mental ability and the size of the body representing physical ability. (Thomas Nast)

Anti-intellectualism refers to a range of attitudes, characterized by skepticism, mistrust or criticism of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism. It is commonly expressed as questioning the value or relevance of intellectual pursuits, including education, philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human endeavours. Anti-intellectuals may present themselves and be perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people.

Totalitarian governments have, in the past, manipulated and applied anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the following dictatorship (1939–1975) of Francisco Franco, the reactionary repression of the White Terror (1936–1945) was notably anti-intellectual, with most of the 200,000 civilians killed being the Spanish intelligentsia, the politically active teachers and academics, artists and writers of the deposed Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). During the Cambodian genocide (1975–1979), the totalitarian regime of Cambodia led by Pol Pot nearly destroyed its entire educated population. During the first and second Trump administrations, fake news and alternative facts became central pillars of discourse in the United States.

Anti-intellectualism manifests in various forms across cultures and historical periods and is influenced by complex social dynamics. It can stem from a distrust of elites or institutions perceived as disconnected from everyday experiences, concerns about cultural identity, or competition in valuing practical knowledge over theoretical or academic expertise. As such, psychological research suggests that certain individuals with anti-intellectual attitudes could sometimes lean towards a display of confidence in their personal experiences rather than trusting authorities, while others adopt their anti-intellectual positions as a reaction to perceived threats to their social status or group identity.

The topic of anti-intellectualism has become a more widely discussed phenomenon in recent years, particularly due to its role in shaping public perception of expertise in science and education. This has led to widespread skepticism of scientific experts and advancements, raising questions about the dangers of anti-intellectualism in public health. The increasing use of anti-intellectualism in politics can be seen in modern society, such as the anti-vax movement.

Ideological anti-intellectualism

The new rulers of Cambodia call 1975 "Year Zero", the dawn of an age in which there will be no families, no sentiment, no expressions of love or grief, no medicines, no hospitals, no schools, no books, no learning, no holidays, no music, no song, no post, no money – only work and death.

John Pilger, Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia (1979)

In the 20th century, societies systematically removed intellectuals from power to expediently end public political dissent. During the Cold War (1945–1991), the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1948–1990) ostracized the philosopher Václav Havel as a politically unreliable man unworthy of ordinary Czechs' trust; the post-communist Velvet Revolution (17 November – 29 December 1989) elected Havel president for ten years. Ideologically-extreme dictatorships who mean to recreate a society such as the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia (1975–1979) pre-emptively killed potential political opponents, especially the educated middle-class and the intelligentsia. To realize the Year Zero of Cambodian history, Khmer Rouge social engineering restructured the economy by de-industrialization and assassinated non-communist Cambodians suspected of "involvement in free-market activities" such as the urban professionals of society (physicians, attorneys, engineers, et al.) and people with political connections to foreign governments. The doctrine of Pol Pot identified the farmers as the true proletariat of Cambodia and the true representatives of the working class entitled to hold government power, hence the anti-intellectual purges.

In the Night of the Long Batons (29 July 1966), the federal police physically purged politically incorrect academics who opposed the right-wing military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966–1970) in Argentina from five faculties of the University of Buenos Aires.

In 1966, the anti-communist Argentine military dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966–1970) intervened at the University of Buenos Aires with the Night of the Long Batons to physically dislodge politically dangerous academics from five university faculties. That expulsion to the exile of the academic intelligentsia became a national brain drain upon the society and economy of Argentina. In opposition to the military repression of free speech, biochemist César Milstein said ironically: "Our country would be put in order, as soon as all the intellectuals who were meddling in the region were expelled."

Academic anti-intellectualism

In The Campus War (1971), the philosopher John Searle said,

[T]he two most salient traits of the radical movement are its anti-intellectualism and its hostility to the university as an institution. ... Intellectuals, by definition, are people who take ideas seriously for their own sake. Whether or not a theory is true or false is important to them, independently of any practical applications it may have. [Intellectuals] have, as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out, an attitude to ideas that is at once playful and pious. But, in the radical movement, the intellectual ideal of knowledge for its own sake is rejected. Knowledge is seen as valuable only as a basis for action, and it is not even very valuable there. Far more important than what one knows is how one feels.

In Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972), the sociologist Stanislav Andreski advised laymen to distrust the intellectuals' appeals to authority when they make questionable claims about resolving the problems of their society: "Do not be impressed by the imprint of a famous publishing house, or the volume of an author's publications. ... Remember that the publishers want to keep the printing presses busy, and do not object to nonsense if it can be sold."

In Science and Relativism: Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science (1990), philosopher of science and epistemologist Larry Laudan said that the prevailing type of philosophy taught at universities in the U.S. (Postmodernism and Poststructuralism) is anti-intellectual, because "the displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter, by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is—second only to American political campaigns—the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time."

Distrust of intellectuals

In the U.S., the conservative American economist Thomas Sowell argued for distinctions between unreasonable and reasonable wariness of intellectuals in their influence upon the institutions of a society. In defining intellectuals as "people whose occupations deal primarily with ideas", Sowell conveys the view that they are different from people whose work is the practical application of ideas. Under this framework, the cause for layman's mistrust lies in the intellectuals' supposed incompetence outside their fields of expertise. The portrayed view is that, although having great working knowledge in their specialist fields when compared to other professions and occupations, the intellectuals of society could face little discouragement against speaking authoritatively beyond their field of formal expertise and thus are unlikely to face responsibility for the social and practical consequences of their errors. Hence, a physician is judged competent by the effective treatment of a patient's sickness, yet might face a medical malpractice lawsuit should the treatment harm the patient. In contrast, a tenured university professor is unlikely to be judged competent or incompetent by the effectiveness of their intellectualism (ideas) and thus not face responsibility for the social and practical consequences of the implementation of the ideas.

In Britain, the anti-intellectualism of the writer Paul Johnson derived from his close examination of twentieth-century history, which brought him to the conclusion that intellectuals have continually championed disastrous public policies for social welfare and public education, and warned the layman public to "beware [the] intellectuals. Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice." In that vein, "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists" (2000), the American writer Tom Wolfe characterized the intellectual as "a person knowledgeable in one field, who speaks out only in others." In 2000, British publisher Imprint Academic published Dumbing Down, a compilation of essays edited by Ivo Mosley, grandson of the British fascist Oswald Mosley, which included essays on a perceived widespread anti-intellectualism by Jaron Lanier, Ravi Shankar, Robert Brustein, Michael Oakshott among others.

Discrimination

Discrimination of excellence is the violation of formal equality of opportunity and meritocracy, which reward merits of individuals and overachievement. Discrimination of excellence can be caused by different reasons, including legacy preferences, nepotism, substantive equality, affirmative action, ageism or random luck.

An example is when academics, teachers, and students were targeted during the Cambodian genocide. Khmer Rouge chose new teachers by ideology, affirmative action, and not by teaching excellence, which resulted in high illiteracy. Gifted education has been criticized on substantive equality grounds.

Legacy preferences for college admissions have been criticized. Discrimination against excellent students during admissions to Ivy League has been debated during 2019 college admissions bribery scandal. The United States Department of Justice scrutinized higher education over potential systemic biases in college admission standards that would underweight transparent standardized testing criteria due to affirmative action. Harvard College has been sued in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College due to individuals outperforming on standardized college admission tests but not being admitted. Non-merit-based admissions practices, degree conferral or promotion standards have been criticized. Some Universities perform affirmative action on men, in order to maintain a gender balance.

In the United States

17th century

In The Powring Out of the Seven Vials (1642), the Puritan John Cotton demonized intellectual men and women by saying that "the more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee. ... Take off the fond doting ... upon the learning of the Jesuits, and the glorie of the Episcopacy, and the brave estates of the Prelates. I say bee not deceived by these pompes, empty shewes, and faire representations of goodly condition before the eyes of flesh and blood, bee not taken with the applause of these persons". Yet, not every Puritan concurred with Cotton's religious contempt for secular education, such as John Harvard, a major early benefactor of the university which now bears his name.

In The Quest for Cosmic Justice (2001), the economist Thomas Sowell said that anti-intellectualism in the U.S. began in the early Colonial era as an understandable wariness of the educated upper classes because the country mostly was built by people who had fled political and religious persecution by the social system of the educated upper classes. Moreover, few intellectuals possessed the practical hands-on skills required to survive in the New World of North America, which absence from society led to a deep-rooted, populist suspicion of men and women who specialize in "verbal virtuosity", rather than tangible, measurable products and services:

From its colonial beginnings, American society was a "decapitated" society—largely lacking the top-most social layers of European society. The highest elites and the titled aristocracies had little reason to risk their lives crossing the Atlantic, and then face the perils of pioneering. Most of the white population of colonial America arrived as indentured servants and the black population as slaves. Later waves of immigrants were disproportionately peasants and proletarians, even when they came from Western Europe ... The rise of American society to pre-eminence, as an economic, political, and military power, was thus the triumph of the common man, and a slap across the face to the presumptions of the arrogant, whether an elite of blood or books.

19th century

In U.S. history, the advocacy and acceptability of anti-intellectualism have varied, in part because the majority of Americans lived a rural life of arduous manual labor and agricultural work prior to the industrialization of the late nineteenth century. Therefore, academic education in the Greco–Roman classics was primarily perceived as having impractical value, and the bookish scholar deemed an unprofitable occupation. Yet, Americans of the nineteenth century were generally literate people who read Shakespeare for intellectual pleasure and the Christian Bible for emotional succor; thus, the ideal American was a literate and technically skilled man who was successful in his trade, ergo a productive member of society. Culturally, the ideal American was the self-made man whose knowledge derived from life-experience, not an intellectual man whose knowledge of the real world was derived from books, formal education, and academic study; thus, the justified anti-intellectualism reported in The New Purchase, or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West (1843), the Rev. Bayard R. Hall, A.M., said about frontier Indiana:

We always preferred an ignorant, bad man to a talented one, and, hence, attempts were usually made to ruin the moral character of a smart candidate; since, unhappily, smartness and wickedness were supposed to be generally coupled, and [like-wise] incompetence and goodness.

Yet, the "real-life" redemption of the egghead American intellectual was possible if he embraced the mores and values of mainstream society; thus, in the fiction of O. Henry, a character notes that once an East Coast university graduate "gets over" his intellectual vanity, he no longer thinks himself better than other men, realizing he makes just as good a cowboy as any other young man, despite his common-man counterpart being the slow-witted naïf of good heart, a pop culture stereotype from stage shows.

20th–21st centuries

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.

Isaac Asimov, 1980

In 1912, New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson described the battle:

What I fear is a government of experts. God forbid that, in a democratic country, we should resign the task and give the government over to experts. What are we for if we are to be scientifically taken care of by a small number of gentlemen who are the only men who understand the job?

In Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), the historian Richard Hofstadter said that anti-intellectualism is a social-class response by the middle-class "mob", against the privileges of the political elites. As the middle class developed political power, they exercised their belief that the ideal candidate to the office was the "self-made man", not the well-educated man born to wealth. The self-made man from the middle class could be trusted to act in the best interest of his fellow citizens. As evidence of this view, Hofstadter cited the derision of Adlai Stevenson as an "egghead". In Americans and Chinese: Passages to Differences (1980), Francis Hsu said that American egalitarianism is stronger in the United States than in Europe, e.g. in England,

English individualism developed hand in hand with legal equality. American self-reliance, on the other hand, has been inseparable from an insistence upon economic and social as well as political equality. The result is that a qualified individualism, with a qualified equality, has prevailed in England, but what has been considered the inalienable right of every American is unrestricted self-reliance and, at least ideally, unrestricted equality. The English, therefore, tend to respect class-based distinctions in birth, wealth, status, manners, and speech, while Americans resent them.

Such social resentment characterises contemporary political discussions about the socio-political functions of mass-communication media and science; that is, scientific facts, generally accepted by educated people throughout the world, are misrepresented as opinions in the U.S., specifically about climate science and global warming.

Miami University anthropology professor Homayun Sidky has argued that 21st-century anti-scientific and pseudoscientific approaches to knowledge, particularly in the United States, are rooted in a postmodernist "decades-long academic assault on science": "Many of those indoctrinated in postmodern anti-science went on to become conservative political and religious leaders, policymakers, journalists, journal editors, judges, lawyers, and members of city councils and school boards. Sadly, they forgot the lofty ideals of their teachers, except that science is bogus."

In 2017, a Pew Research Center poll revealed that a majority of American Republicans thought colleges and universities had a negative impact on the United States. In 2019, academics Adam Waters and E.J. Dionne stated that U.S. President Donald Trump "campaigned for the presidency and continues to govern as a man who is anti-intellectual, as well as anti-fact and anti-truth." In 2020, Trump signed an executive order banning anti-racism bias trainings from offices of federal agencies, grant programs, and federal contractors as part of a larger strategy to combat a perceived progressive academic bias, like emphases on the political legacy of American slavery, with "patriotic education" instead.

Education and knowledge

The U.S. ranks at a middling quality of education compared to other countries, and Americans often lack basic knowledge and skills. John Traphagan of the University of Texas attributes this to a culture of anti-intellectualism, noting that nerds and other intellectuals are often stigmatized in American schools and popular culture. At universities, student anti-intellectualism has resulted in the social acceptability of cheating on schoolwork, especially in the business schools, a manifestation of ethically expedient cognitive dissonance rather than of academic critical thinking.

The American Council on Science and Health said that denialism of the facts of climate science and of climate change misrepresents verifiable data and information as political opinion. Anti-intellectualism puts scientists in the public view and forces them to align with either a liberal or a conservative political stance. Moreover, 53% of Republican U.S. Representatives and 74% of Republican senators deny the scientific facts of the causes of climate change.

In the rural U.S., anti-intellectualism is an essential feature of the religious culture of Christian fundamentalism. Mainline Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church have directly published their collective support for political action to counter climate change, whereas Southern Baptists and Evangelicals have denounced belief in both evolution and climate change as a sin, and have dismissed scientists as intellectuals attempting to create "Neo-nature paganism". People of fundamentalist religious belief tend to report not seeing evidence of global warming.

Corporate mass media

The reportage of corporate mass-communications media appealed to societal anti-intellectualism by misrepresenting university life in the U.S., where the students' pursuit of book learning (intellectualism) was secondary to the after-school social life. That the reactionary ideology communicated in mass-media reportage misrepresented the liberal political activism and social protest of students as frivolous, social activities thematically unrelated to the academic curriculum, which is the purpose of attending university. In Anti-intellectualism in American Media (2004), Dane Claussen identified the contemporary anti-intellectualist bent of manufactured consent that is inherent to commodified information:

The effects of mass media on attitudes toward intellect are certainly multiple and ambiguous. On the one hand, mass communications greatly expand the sheer volume of information available for public consumption. On the other hand, much of this information comes pre-interpreted for easy digestion and laden with hidden assumption, saving consumers the work of having to interpret it for themselves. Commodified information naturally tends to reflect the assumptions and interests of those who produce it, and its producers are not driven entirely by a passion to promote critical reflection.

The editorial perspective of the corporate mass media misrepresented intellectualism as a separate profession from the jobs and occupations of regular folk. In presenting academically successful students as social failures, an undesirable social status for the average young man and young woman, corporate media established to the U.S. mainstream their opinion that the intellectualism of book learning is a form of mental deviancy; thus, most people would shun intellectuals as friends, lest they risk social ridicule and ostracism. Hence, the popular acceptance of anti-intellectualism led to populist rejection of the intelligentsia for resolving the problems of society. Moreover, in the book Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture (2013), Aaron Lecklider indicated that the contemporary ideological dismissal of the intelligentsia derived from the corporate media's reactionary misrepresentations of intellectual men and women as lacking the common-sense of regular folk.

In Europe

Soviet Union

See also: Doctors' plot

In the first decade after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks suspected the Tsarist intelligentsia as having the potential to betray the proletariat. Thus, the initial Soviet government consisted of men and women without much formal education. Moreover, the deposed propertied classes were termed Lishentsy ("the disenfranchised"), whose children were excluded from education. Eventually, some 200 Tsarist intellectuals such as writers, philosophers, scientists and engineers were deported to Germany on philosophers' ships in 1922 while others were deported to Latvia and Turkey in 1923.

During the revolutionary period, the pragmatic Bolsheviks employed "bourgeois experts" to manage the economy, industry, and agriculture and so learn from them. After the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), to achieve socialism the Soviet Union (1922–91) emphasized literacy and education in service to modernizing the country via an educated working class intelligentsia rather than an Ivory Tower intelligentsia. During the 1930s and 1950s, Joseph Stalin replaced Vladimir Lenin's intelligentsia with an intelligentsia that was loyal to him and believed in a specifically Soviet world view, thereby producing the pseudoscientific theories of Lysenkoism and Japhetic theory.

In October 1937, there was a mass extermination of Belarusian writers, artists and statespeople by the Soviet Union occupying authorities. This event marked the peak of the Great Purge and repressions of Belarusians in the Soviet-controlled area of eastern Belarus. More than 100 notable persons were executed, most of them on the night of 29–30 October 1937. Their innocence was later admitted by the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's death.

At the beginning of World War II, the Soviet secret police carried out mass executions of the Polish intelligentsia and military leadership in the 1940 Katyn massacre.

Fascism

Related to this is the confrontation between the Spanish Francoist General José Millán-Astray and the writer Miguel de Unamuno during the Dia de la Raza celebration at the University of Salamanca in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. The General exclaimed: ¡Muera la inteligencia! ¡Viva la Muerte! ("Death to the intelligentsia! Long live death!"); the Falangists applauded.

In Asia

China

Imperial China

Qin Shi Huang (246–210 BC), the first Emperor of unified China, consolidated political thought, and power, by suppressing freedom of speech at the suggestion of Chancellor Li Si, who justified such anti-intellectualism by accusing the intelligentsia of falsely praising the emperor, and dissenting through libel. From 213 to 206 BC, it was generally thought that the works of the Hundred Schools of Thought were incinerated, especially the Shi Jing (Classic of Poetry, c. 1000 BC) and the Shujing (Classic of History, c. 6th century BC). The exceptions were books by Qin historians, and books of Legalism, an early type of totalitarianism—and the Chancellor's philosophic school (see the Burning of books and burying of scholars). However, upon further inspection of Chinese historical annals such as the Shi Ji and the Han Shu, this was found not to be the case. The Qin Empire privately kept one copy of each of these books in the Imperial Library but it publicly ordered that the books should be banned. Those who owned copies were ordered to surrender the books to be burned; those who refused were executed. This eventually led to the loss of most ancient works of literature and philosophy when Xiang Yu burned down the Qin palace in 208 BC.

People's Republic of China

See also: Stinking Old Ninth

The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was a politically violent decade which saw wide-ranging social engineering throughout the People's Republic of China by its leader Chairman Mao Zedong. After several national policy crises during which he was motivated by his desire to regain public prestige and control of the Chinese government, Mao announced on 16 May 1966 that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese society were permeated with liberal bourgeois elements who meant to restore capitalism to China and he also announced that people could only be removed after a post–revolutionary class struggle was waged against them. To that effect, China's youth nationally organized themselves into Red Guards and hunted the "liberal bourgeois" elements who were supposedly subverting the CCP and Chinese society. The Red Guards acted nationally, purging the country, the military, urban workers and the leaders of the CCP. The Red Guards were particularly aggressive when they attacked their teachers and professors, causing most schools and universities to be shut down once the Cultural Revolution began. Three years later in 1969, Mao declared that the Cultural Revolution was ended, yet the political intrigues continued until 1976, concluding with the arrest of the Gang of Four, the de facto end of the Cultural Revolution.

Democratic Kampuchea

Main article: Year Zero (political notion)

See also: Killing Fields

When the Communist Party of Kampuchea and the Khmer Rouge (1951–1981) established their regime as Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) in Cambodia, their anti-intellectualism which idealised the country and demonised the cities was immediately imposed on the country in order to establish agrarian socialism, thus, they emptied cities in order to purge the Khmer nation of every traitor, enemy of the state and intellectual, often symbolised by eyeglasses.

Ottoman Empire

Some of the Armenian intellectuals who were detained, deported, and killed in the Armenian genocide of 1915

In the early stages of the Armenian genocide of 1915, around 2,300 Armenian intellectuals were deported from Constantinople (Istanbul) and most of them were subsequently murdered by the Ottoman government. The event has been described by historians as a decapitation strike, the purpose of which was intended to deprive the Armenian population of an intellectual leadership and a chance to resist.