Delusion (intellectual history)

Delusion is a fundamental theme in European intellectual history , from the Homeric epics to theology to modern philosophy . The range of meanings ranges from “confusion of the senses” and “ delusion ” to “blindness of the mind” (Latin caecitas mentis , caecitas animi or excaecatio ) and “godlessness” to the modern interpretation as “ denial of reality”.

Ancient term

In general, since ancient times, delusion has been a confusion of the senses sent by the gods, from which mistakes and harm arise. Understood religiously, delusion and wrongdoing are based on deafness to divine commandment.

In the Iliad , Agamemnon accuses Moira , Zeus and Erinys of having thrown “wild delusion” into his intellect; his opponent Achilles complains that father Zeus plunges people deeply into delusion. In this perspective, the delusion, sent by the overpowering deity, comes as fate over people: Ate "walks over the heads of people and entangles at least one of the two in delusion".

In Hesiod's theogony, delusion ruins the bonds of the community. It is understood as a consequence of the human hubris that causes it .

The tragedians describe the delusion intellectually as folly and unreason. With Sophocles , delusion generally shows human blindness, man's entanglement in mere doxa ( opinion ), his susceptibility to deception and self-deception. The truth is only recognized through suffering. In the Antigone it is said: "Whom the god wants to destroy, he first strikes with blindness."

Biblical-theological perspective

In the case of John the Evangelist , delusion appears as a sign of unbelief (John 12:40), God remains the general cause of human enlightenment. According to Paul , God blinded the minds of the unbelievers. Augustine defines the “blindness of the spirit” and the “darkening of the heart” in the theology of sin as punishment for pride.

In Thomas Aquinas ' dullness (hebetudo sensus) and the gift of insight (donum intellectus) oppose one another. In his doctrine of “willful ignorance” (ignorantia voluntaria) he assigns the character of sin to spiritual blindness insofar as it is willful. But delusion as spiritual blindness and obduration (induratio) can also be traced back to divine restraint of grace, as punishment for the salutary humiliation of the sinner.

Modern

The modern term delusion refers to the denial of reality .

Martin Heidegger (“ Seinsvergessenheit ”) and Theodor W. Adorno come up with a diagnosis of the times, referring to the delusion concept of Greek tragedy. In Heidegger's history of being, it is said that there is “a blindness against the extreme need of being in the form of the prevailing needlessness amid all the distress of beings” (Nietzsche vol. 2, 1961, p. 393). Adorno asks ideology-critically about the delusion and delusion that constitute collective consciousness in every society. Already in the Dialectic of Enlightenment he had thematized the relapse of the historical enlightenment processes into mythology. Adorno sees a blindness in history and society and asks to what extent art is able to "break through" the blindness. He understands his negative dialectic as “an expression of the universal delusion context and its criticism”.

Jürgen Habermas tries less aporetic than Adorno to understand the context of delusion as the “compulsory context” of a historical process that has not yet been carried out with will and consciousness. The coercive context can be resolved with the help of the emancipatory power of communication .

literature

Deck, Jan: I look you in the eye, social delusion! Texts on subject constitution and ideology production , Mainz 2001