The standard use of the concept is this. Tom wants Dick dead, but he doesn’t want to be charged for the murder himself. So he tells Harry – falsely, let’s suppose – that Dick has cuckolded him, relying on his knowledge that Harry is virtually guaranteed to go ballistic. It was Harry who pulled the trigger. But wasn’t it Tom who pulled the trigger on that trigger? Harry’s behaviour was the actus nous interveniens, i.e. the new intervening act. But in determining Tom‘s culpability the courts will want to know just how reliably Tom took Harry’s reaction to be what it was.

A lot of what I write – perhaps the lion’s share of it – is satire. I rely on my readers to know that. Some university administrators think I know – or at least should know – that, not them of course but some other people are too stupid to know that. And that I should therefore be accountable for these other people’s stupidity. For example, I wrote in a blog once that I used to rape my more fetching female students but my wife asked me to stop and so I did. Some people – or so they claim – understood me to be confessing to a criminal offence. But if they’re stupid enough to think that, what could I write that they’re not too stupid to take literally?

It’s an interesting question – is it not? – what the editorial page would look like if it were written for people so far on the spectrum that they can’t understand satire, or even a metonym. “The White House announced today …” Impossible. Buildings don’t talk.

So I think we need a new hermeneutical principle. One shall be entitled to assume – certainly at a university or in a blog site like this – that his listeners aren’t retarded. Even if their minders are.

Categories: Critical Thinking, Why My Colleagues Are Idiots

Tags: actus novus interveniens, jurisprudence, the autism spectrum, university administrators