Truly Idiots? The Modern Idiots : A Normative Critique.
Uploaded by Ethan4xx8 on Feb 28, 2015
An idiot, dolt, or dullard is an intellectually disabled person, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way. Archaically the word mome has also been used. The similar terms moron, imbecile, and cretin have all gained specialized meanings in modern times. An idiot is said to be idiotic, and to suffer from idiocy. A dunce is an idiot who is specifically incapable of learning. An idiot differs from a fool and an ignoramus, neither of which refers to someone with low intelligence. In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, and its symptoms . In psychology, it is a historical term for the state or condition now called profound intellectual disability.
Etymology
Idiot is a word derived from the Greek, idiōtēs, from, idios . In Latin the word idiota preceded the Late Latin meaning "uneducated or ignorant person". Its modern meaning and form dates back to Middle English around the year 1300, from the Old French idiote . The related word idiocy dates to 1487 and may have been analogously modeled on the words prophet and prophecy. The word has cognates in many other languages.
An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs. Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education. The military connotation in Bauer's definition stems from the fact that ancient Greek armies in the time of total war mobilized all male citizens to fight, and many of these citizens tended to fight poorly and ignorantly.
Disability
In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe intellectual disability. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for intellectual disability based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years. The term "idiot" was used to refer to people having an IQ below 30. IQ, or intelligence quotient, was originally determined by dividing a person's mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by their actual age. The concept of mental age has fallen into disfavor,...