INTP and Morality

EDIT: I realize now that the word morality in the title was a poor choice! What I meant was ethics. Apologies for the confusion; I wasn't very careful when I wrote my title.

I want to open a small discussion (which has some personal relevance) about an interesting thing I've come to notice about the INTP. Namely, many of the famous or historically impactful ones seem to have a very strong sense of morality and fairness that often seems ahead of their times, often (but not always) paired with actually going out and doing something about it! Thinking about this, Albert Einstein, Lincoln, Kant, Locke, and (maybe) Thomas Jefferson come to mind. It's not just myself that has noticed either, I stumbled upon this article recently that gave support to what I was thinking; "The Common Genius of Lincoln and Einstein" by NAUTILUS asserts that Einstein and Lincoln had what they call a moral genius like that of NFJs such as Ghandi or MLK.

If you look at CelebrityTypes' list of INTPs, they have exactly one evil INTP listed, Albert Speer, whose crime was being an [literal] architect for the Nazis and who actually had the nickname of "the Nazi who said sorry" (sincerely or not). Looking at all the other INTPs on their list, none of them seem like the kind of people I would distrust! I grant that not everyone agrees with CT's assessments or their politically motivated good/evil classification, but it's a very interesting trend!

Ultimately, it appears (famous) INTPs are very prone to developing a very mature sense of ethics.

Which brings me to a rather interesting question. INTPs have Fe in the inferior position. They are one of the 4 types that have a Feeling function at the bottom (INTP, ISTP, ENTJ, ESTJ). Contrasting with these three other types, it seems obvious that something very curious is going on with INTP! Even INTP's Ti-brothers, the ISTPs, if CT's quotes are any indication, seem to be able to put aside their empathy and really strike opportunistically for what they want. The ETJs are even further away and seem kind of abrasive and callous at times; they appear to be people for whom ethics are a thing that's nice to have... if they don't get in their way!

So what is it about these INTPs that seems to make them surprisingly guided by ethics despite the fact that they are supposed to actively repress Fe? Or is that just a loaded question because I'm being delusional and ascribing traits to INTPs that they don't actually have?

Posted Feb 8, 2016, 3:47 AM UTC · edited

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