Genius State of Mind – Determination or Effect? Through this paper I put together philosophical aspects and also medical ones regarding Nietzsche’s mental disorders. The analyze is based on three different discussions on modeling or creative suffering, bipolar disorder and altered states of consciousness ‒ extended consciousness and will show us some interesting findings, one of them is that the bipolar disorder II that Nietzsche was suffering of, could be the trigger point for it’s genius state of mind. (...) Also in the discussions chapter some questions regarding genius are raised. (shrink)

One of the most significant events in European intellectual history of the last century and a half was the injection by Schopenhauer of a subjective brand of Neo-Platonism into Post-Kantian thought. This study first describes Schopenhauer's position by concentrating on his account of the Genius, and proceeds to trace reactions to that figure in the works of Nietzsche, Jung, Freud, and Wittgenstein. The author's ambition is twofold: to resolve certain issues of interpretation regarding the positions of those following Schopenhauer, (...) and to relate the history of a movement that encompassed both ordinary language philosophy, psychoanalysis, analytic psychology, and the work of Nietzsche. (shrink)

This article proposes a way of opening up the concept of genius to renewed understanding by analysing it in relation to the ‘others’ that are represented by melancholy, imposture and the reader. Discussions where genius is defined oppositionally are contrasted with those where such others are integral to the account of the phenomenon. The argument is based on a reading of three of the founding texts of the literature on genius, Aristotle's Problemata XXX, 1, Plato's Ion and (...) Kant's Critique of Judgement. (shrink)

The ArgumentFocusing on the celebrations of Newton and his work, this article investigates the use of the concept of genius and its connection with debates on the methodology of science and the morality of great discoverers. During the period studied, two areas of tension developed. Firstly, eighteenth-century ideas about the relationship between genius and method were challenged by the notion of scientific genius as transcending specifiable rules of method. Secondly, assumptions about the nexus between intellectual and moral (...) virtue were threatened by the emerging conception of genius as marked by an extraordinary personality – on the one hand capable of breaking with established methods to achieve great discoveries, on the other, likely to transgress moral and social conventions. The assesments of Newton by nineteenth-century scientists such as Brewster, Whewell, and De Morgan were informed by these tensions. (shrink)

A man tirelessly looks for answers to numerous questions about deep ontological problems concerning the meaning of life, fundamental reasons or the last things. The aim of the article is to build a theoretical base, on the basis of which one will have opportunity to ask yet further questions, which are relevant in relation to human existence especially for philosophers. The genius requires a huge commitment to get to it. It also involves an internal declaration of continuous self-improvement. Contrary (...) to the philosophers of the era of modernism, I believe that to a greater or lesser extent, every person can potentially be genuine and great. After all in the mechanism and in the specific rhythm of tape improvement of the product as well as in the fiery ideas contemplated by the people of philosophy and art we can find passion for life and creativity People as such do not live in strictly defined internal boundaries and therefore they can constantly develop. If a wider group of philosophers can be interested in the concept of philosophy which is open to current human problems, interested primarily in other people (also in the sense of their huge diversity), then the goal of this essay will eventually be achieved. From the perspective of the possibility of a sense of job satisfaction it does not matter whether someone cooks well or paints beautifully. Everybody can equally develop in the essential sense of self-improvement. The scientific aspirations of the approach to this philosophical problem are fortunately unable to hide the values of human work in general, and especially the work done on oneself, overcoming one's own prejudices and going beyond the previously established conventions. It is only the acquisition of the ability to play freely with what is given to an existence that gives a man the chance to free himself from the shackles of restrictions existing on many levels of culture, religion or art. (shrink)

Peter Kivy argues that Handel was the first composer to be regarded as a genius and that only in the eighteenth century was the philosophical apparatus in place that would enable any composer to be conceived of as a musical genius. According to Kivy, a Longinian conception of genius transformed Handel into a genius. A Platonic conception of genius was used to classify Mozart as a genius. Then Kant adopted a Longinian conception of (...) class='Hi'>genius and this shaped the perception of Beethoven. Kivy is wrong on all counts. Composers were thought to be geniuses long before Handel. The emergence of philosophical aesthetics in the eighteenth century did little to shape conceptions of musical genius. More specifically, Kivy misrepresents Kant's conception of genius and the role that it plays in the recognition of Beethoven as a musical genius. (shrink)

The concept of genius—artistic genius in particular—is generally thought of as a quintessentially nineteenth-century phenomenon: the cornerstone, in fact, of German romanticism. Kant’s treatment of the concept has always been recognized as the source from which the early Romantics drew. But the fact of the matter is that it is to the British Enlightenment that we must look for the first modern formulation of the concept of artistic genius. For it was already well formed and clearly recognizable (...) before Kant got his hands on it. The essay begins by suggesting two ancient sources for the concept of genius, as it developed in eighteenth-century Britain. It then goes on to discuss the contributions to the concept of Joseph Addison, Edward Young, Alexander Gerard, William Duff, and Gerard again, who dipped his oar in twice. (shrink)

In The Stigma of Genius: Einstein, Consciousness and Critical Education, we muse over ways in which to be, to become, to recognize uniqueness and different paths to genius. Understanding that there is no prescribed procedure, but only multiple actions, means, measures in which to recognize or teach to genius, we look at Einstein's life and knowledges to connect our pedagogies and students. Today's schools often exemplify an inability to stimulate and encourage students to find passion, goals, and (...) reasons to be educated. Our public school students are often not succeeding, many are failing and are discouraged. Teachers are exhausted, overworked, lacking respect and administrative support in districts controlled by local and national politics. Using Einstein as an example, but also a metaphor for educators, The Stigma of Genius is straight talk about the needs for schools/teachers/administrators/students to become critically and contextually aware. We argue for an education which is conscious of students' needs, and the nuances within each school and each classroom. Discussing cognition, classes, urban education, and diversity, we have attempted to circle back to Einstein and understand ways to support and encourage today's geniuses. (shrink)

This paper contains a consideration of the notion of genius and its significance to the discussion of the aesthetics of sport. We argue that genius can make a positive aes- thetic contribution in both art and sport, just as some have argued that the moral content of a work of art can affect its aesthetic value. A genius is an exceptional inno- vator of successful strategies, where such originality adds aesthetic value. We argue that an original painting (...) can have greater aesthetic value than an exact replica, merely because it is the original. By parity of reasoning, a successful innovation in sport has additional aesthetic value just because it is a new creation. The genius is one who can provide this extra aesthetic pleasure and on that basis is rightly valued. The genius need not be conscious of how they achieve such innovations and thus find their own genius to be something they cannot explain but only demonstrate. In sport, innova- tions that offer new ways of playing or solving problems can produce competitive success which demands instant recognition and rewards. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to analyzing the nature of genius in the context of the development of fiction about artists. From the biographies of the famous Renaissance artists by G. Vasari, who made one of the first attempts at chronicling the lives of geniuses of his time, to modern fictionalized biographies of genius artists – we can trace the desire of writers to comprehend the nature of the artists and sculptors’ genius. The foundation of the concept of (...) genius can be found in Immanuel Kant’s works, which synthesized theories developed previously and influenced the understanding of genius by future generations. The paper analyses the consonance of Kant’s aesthetics with the concept of genius in fictionalized biographies of F. Goya, M. Bashkirtseva, V. van Gogh, P. Gauguin, O. Novakivskyi, K. Bilokur, P. Picasso, V. Tsymbal, S. Karaffa-Korbut and other artists, while focusing on the Ukrainian texts of the 20th–early 21st centuries. The research attempts to single out and analyze elements of conceptualizing the notion of genius in novels, including the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime in art, recognition of genius in society, the gender aspect of genius, the issues of heredity, and others. The representation of the image of genius in visual arts, iconography, and the cult of genius are discussed within an intermedial framework. The research relies on literary and art criticism methodology and comparative and intermedial studies. (shrink)

I reconstruct the aestheticism of Martin Buber in order to provide a new way of framing his moral philosophy and development as a thinker. The evolution of Buber’s thought does not entail a shift from aesthetics to ethics, but a shift from one aspect of aesthetics to another, namely, from taking genius to be key to social renewal, to taking taste to be key. I draw on Kantian aesthetics to show the connection between Buber’s aesthetic concerns and his moral (...) concerns, and to defend the notion that a certain aesthetic orientation may be just what is needed for moral response. (shrink)

This essay examines the concept of genius in the work of Jacques Derrida and Immanuel Kant and argues that, despite Derrida’s arguments to the contrary, there is significant space for convergence between the two accounts. This convergence is sought in the complex, paradoxical relationship between the invention of the new and the contextual conditions, or ‘rules’, from which any work of genius must depart but without which no work of genius would be possible. It is my argument (...) that Kant evades the true consequences of his own thought and escapes into a naturalist metaphysics. Only Derrida reveals the aporetic logic at the heart of genius but he fails to recognise the continuity between his own argument and that of his 18th-century predecessor. Derrida’s genius, so I contend, is Kant’s genius pushed to the limit and with all transcendental guarantees removed. (shrink)

Peter Ralston’s exceptionally lucid trilogy on the nature of human consciousness culminates here in The Genius of Being, a book of deep contemplations on the unseen elements that create our world. The first volume, The Book of Not Knowing, garnered much praise as a comprehensive exploration of the depths of self and consciousness. The second volume, Pursuing Consciousness, clarifies the difference between enlightenment and self-transformation, and then pairs these two goals in a strikingly effective way. This third book is (...) both shorter and more complex, taking us straight to the heart of the origins of our experience. In a progression of illuminating assertions, Ralston shows us how human consciousness carves out distinctions from whatever is absolutely true. This dynamic not only generates both self and reality from nothing, it imbues them with the quality of objective truth. From the time we first distinguish between self and not-self as infants, we begin making a sequence of existential assumptions that result in the illusion that a self is some ethereal “object” within. This universally accepted assumption persists despite the failure of exhaustive investigations to locate this inner self. This book is not for the faint of heart or the casual seeker, but contemplating the assertions here empowers you to personally and experientially grasp what is rarely even glimpsed: a profound consciousness of the genesis of human experience. (shrink)

In Kant scholarship the significance of the beauty of nature for Kant’s aesthetics has been traditionally favored over the beauty of art. By focusing on Kant’s characterization of genius as a gift of nature, my aim is to show that, in contrast to the already existing interpretations of this issue in Kant literature, the works of art as the works of genius can indeed serve as ‘signs’ that nature and the world as a whole is hospitable to the (...) realization of our moral ends, or is morally purposive. My claim that for Kant not only the beauty of nature but also the works of art as the works of genius serve as signs of world’s moral purposiveness, or of—in Dieter Henrich’s words—the “moral image of the world,” calls for a reevaluation of the role of art in Kant’s moral teleology and, consequently, for a reevaluation of the place of art in Kant’s aesthetics. (shrink)

This article addresses two issues: the first is the philosopher's fear of a lawless freedom of nature. I quote Deleuze and Guattari, who explain our terror before chaos and the consequent call for help and protection. My hypothesis was that this threat of chaos has affected also the enlightened mind of Kant. Facing the possibility of chaos, the objective Kant did not exactly fear delusion and madness, which affect only fragile subjectivities, but was terrified with the chance that nature does (...) not behave regularly, i.e., that _ knowledge _ becomes impossible. The second issue is a harder and more difficult question, and it is related to the _modern_ artist’s (or genius) anguish. It is a technical or an artistical complaint. He/She finds no more given rules to create his/her artworks. Differently from the philosopher, the genius fears the silence and the absolute muteness of nature. I try to deal with these two issues by taking into account Kant’s concept of purposiveness of nature as a regulative principle. I realize that, although this sufficed to calm down the philosopher’s anxiety, it proved to be insufficient to guide the artist. The delusion and madness that threaten the genius are deeper and more extreme than those of the philosopher. In order to treat the artist’s pain, without having to abandon the connection between art and nature, that constitutes one of the most fruitful reading keys of Kant’s Aesthetics, I resort to other ideas I found reading Lacoue-Labarthe and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, on Kant's view, the work of genius serves as a sensible exhibition of the Idea of the highest good. In other words, the work of genius serves as a special sign that the world is hospitable to our moral ends and that the realization of our moral vocation in such a world may indeed be possible. In the first part of the paper, I demonstrate that the purpose of the highest good is (...) not to strengthen our motivation to accept the moral law as binding for us but, rather, to strengthen our motivation to persist in our already existent moral dispositions. In the second part, I show that the works of genius exhibit the Idea of the highest good and, consequently, strengthen our hope in its realization. Drawing on the results of the second part, the third part of the paper demonstrates that beauty, of both art and nature, symbolizes morality in a more substantive sense than that suggested by Henry Allison's “formalistic” interpretation. Since, on my view, fine art in Kant serves as a sensible representation of an undetermined conceptual content, or the Idea of the highest good, the fourth part of the paper addresses the vexed question of whether Kant's account of fine art already anticipates the cognitive role later attributed to it by the German Idealists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 124.3 (2003) 493-496 [Access article in PDF] Piero Boitani. The Genius to Improve an Invention: Literary Transitions. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. xiv + 151 pp. Cloth, $35; paper, $18. This is an English-language revision of Boitani's Il genio di migliorare un'invenzione (Bologna 1999), which was itself originally composed in English; as Boitani engagingly puts it, "I do not quite know (...) in what language I am writing" (xiv). The book's "linguistic vicissitudes" are intriguingly appropriate to its topic, which is the (mostly) translingual commerce between literary texts in which the difference evident in imitation can be understood as an inspired "improvement." That terminology comes from Dryden's somewhat hangdog comment on the relative unoriginality of English writers: "the Genius of our Countrymen in general," he writes in the preface to his Fables, is "rather to improve an Invention, than to invent themselves" (cited by Boitani, 74). Boitani is more celebratory about the process in question, which he takes to be an important motor of both literary creation and literary history; "improvement" for him suggests "that species of literary transmission which comes somewhere between T. S. Eliot's notion of tradition and the individual talent and Harold Bloom's 'anxiety of influence.' 'Improving' means kicking against ancestorly traces... but it also means accepting our predecessors, taking them on in a nonbelligerent sense—indeed, positively loving them with filial devotion: a relationship which will inevitably be (as Bloom argues) Oedipal-Freudian but also a special one of affection and 'moving beyond'" (ix). This is not so much a theory as an enlightened disposition to give both piety and competitiveness their due in assessing authorial relations across gaps of time and language; most of the book's trim length is taken up with a series of handsomely mounted case studies.The central three chapters, all dealing with English engagements with classic Italian poetry, are, I think, the most rewarding. Boitani's inwardness with the Italian material gives the discussions a confidence and specificity—at times a passion—not often met with in anglophone scholarship on the subjects he takes up. Chaucer's recasting of Boccaccio's Filostrato as Troilus and Criseyde is in effect a stilnovist recasting, making the story truer to the spirit of Boccaccio's own Italian predecessors. In a passage of otherwise close translation from Filostrato, Chaucer substitutes his version of the incipit of a famous canzone of Guido Guinizelli's on the nature of love ("Al cor gentile rempaira sempre amore"; "In gentil hertes ay redy to repaire"). Boitani offers a brief but compelling reading of Guinizelli's poem itself, which seems to him "the fascinating dramatization of a whole culture" (53), and then traces Dante's involvement with it, most significantly in his portrait of Francesca in Inferno 5, where illicit love is treated with a compassion that readers continue to find surprising. The English Criseyde is, as it were, an extension of the same line of thought: "Chaucer seems to understand the analogies of Guinizelli's canzone and to interpret them as a sequence that sketches in a double—downward and upward—movement in a Dantean perspective. Francesca may yet lead to Beatrice" (68). Along the way [End Page 493] Dante is imagined saluting the work of his successor: "Well done, Dante would say, enough is kept, enough is changed. The invention is properly improved" (64). The result is a welcome if mostly implicit rebuke to the sterner, less romantic understandings of Chaucer's poem that have tended to dominate in the last several decades.In the chapter that gives its title to the book as a whole, a more linear sequence of revision is traced from Boccaccio's Teseida through Chaucer's Knight's Tale to Shakespeare's and Fletcher's Two Noble Kinsmen and Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Within this succession, Shakespeare and Fletcher strain the outlines of Boitani's own model; they "have... not just 'improved' an 'invention.' They have radically revolutionized the story, and perhaps their 'anxiety of influence' toward Chaucer [in their... (shrink)

This book sets forth a new area in the study of extraordinary individuals in religious traditions. It develops the category of "Religious Genius" as an alternative to existing categories, primarily "saint." It constructs a model by which to appreciate these individuals, suggesting key characteristics such as love, humility, and self-surrender. Religious geniuses transform their traditions and their legacies endure through these very transformations. They also inspire changes across religious boundaries and traditions. The study of religious geniuses in various faith (...) traditions therefore advances interfaith engagement today. The book complements existing, primarily historical, studies of saints by offering a phenomenological approach that seeks to touch the subjectivity of these individuals, and how they have affected the unfolding of their religious traditions. (shrink)

In Kant scholarship the significance of the beauty of nature for Kant’s aesthetics has been traditionally favored over the beauty of art. By focusing on Kant’s characterization of genius as a gift of nature, my aim is to show that, in contrast to the already existing interpretations of this issue in Kant literature, the works of art as the works of genius can indeed serve as ‘signs’ that nature and the world as a whole is hospitable to the (...) realization of our moral ends, or is morally purposive. My claim that for Kant not only the beauty of nature but also the works of art as the works of genius serve as signs of world’s moral purposiveness, or of—in Dieter Henrich’s words—the “moral image of the world,” calls for a reevaluation of the role of art in Kant’s moral teleology and, consequently, for a reevaluation of the place of art in Kant’s aesthetics. (shrink)

The essay, which consists of two parts, analyzes the female images of two great artists Botticelli and Picasso. The essay has the character of an art history study with memoir interweaves. In the first part, the author makes an attempt to decipher the genius of Botticelli using the technique of analyzing the prototype of the artist's heroine and comparing it with the image of a real woman, similar to the Botticelli model. The artist's genius is revealed through the (...) type created by him, in a sense — invariant, of a beautiful woman, the spiritual and material image of which is repeated in reality. The energy of Botticelli's paintings, which is their secret, allowed the author to see in life a real copy of the artist's heroine. Using the archive of preserved personal letters of a beautiful lady, as if she descended from Botticelli's paintings “Spring” and “The Birth of Venus”, the author draws an analogy the epistolary legacy with cinema, when events are described not in strict chronological order, but rather individual important moments and experiences are highlighted and are scaled. According to the letters, the author reconstructs the character of his heroine and hypothetically transfers these character traits to the Botticelli model, about whose character there is almost no evidence left. The second part of the essay is inspired by a photograph of Picasso's wife Olga Khokhlova, preserved in the personal archive of the author's friends. The author embeds his story about the muse and the great love of Picasso and about his other paradoxical models in the circumstances of his personal life, in the situation of his youth, comparing the revolutionary changes in art at the beginning of the XX century with the moods of the representatives of the artistic intelligentsia of the 70s of the past century. The heroines of Picasso and the strange interweaving of the fate of the participants in the author's narrative represent the content of this part of the essay. (shrink)

This essay explores Immanuel Kant’s notion of artistic genius and how it relates to the modern conception of the interrelated ideas of nature and freedom as they appear in his Critique of Judgement. Genius works as a unique concept in Kant’s oeuvre, showing how art provides a harmony within what, in Reformational philosophy, they call the “ground-motive” “nature-freedom.” The concept of originality as it relates to genius has the potential for an alternative reading to what was held (...) subsequent to Kant and what is still held today, one that puts the emphasis on a certain relationality. Hannah Arendt’s conception of freedom and Jacques Derrida’s reading of Kant are also relevant. This essay’s reading of Kant’s genius, defined by its multifaceted network of relational forces, shows a way out of the bind of the binary nature and freedom. By explicating Kant’s notion of artistic genius, one is able to better understand art and its function: probing the complex relationship that humans have with themselves and the rest of creation. (shrink)

Camus's description of the French hotel argues that architecture should please the senses and the mind.

The paper starts with the question, posed by Wittgenstein, whether animals can feign or act as if they are performing in a theatre. It is argued that the idea that they cannot is widespread, not only in philosophy but also in biology or poetry. Animals are generally considered to be too honest for that. A second question is whether there are people who are too honest for feigning or acting. Foucault’s famous discussion about madmen sheds some light on this question. (...) Two concepts play an important role in his discussion: ‘innocence’ and ‘genius’. These concepts are not only discussed in relationship to Foucault but also in relationship to Lorenz and Nietzsche. It will be argued that both concepts play an important role in combating an overly rationalist or logocentric ethics. According to the thinkers discussed in this article, an ethics which denies the animality in man is nothing else but dangerous. (shrink)

There is a classical paradox in education that also affects the epistemic virtues: the paradox inherent in the demand to develop general strategies for training persons to be free and creative individuals. This problem becomes particularly salient with respect to the epistemic virtue ofcreativity, the more so if we consider a radical form of creativity, namely,genius. This paper explores a historical constellation in which rigorous claims about the standards for knowledge and morality were developed, along with a highly influential (...) notion of genius: the philosophy of Kant and of immediate post‐Kantian philosophers. The paper shows how in this historical moment came together a new notion of “science,” a theory of “genius” and of virtues, and an analysis of the promises and difficulties inherent in educating a virtuous or creative individual. In this constellation of ideas, there also emerges a potentially fruitful account of how to teach intellectual creativity. (shrink)

John Muir can be interpreted to have employed a similar strategy in his earliest conservation advocacy writings as the strategy Ralph Waldo Emerson employed to overcome the public futility of his personal ideals. Like Emerson, Muir came to offset the despair he felt at the political impotence of his conscience with a positive outlook on his potential to embody his subjective ideals both in his personal character and in his contributions to concrete forms of social practice. Muir thus can be (...) shown to have standing in the environmental virtue ethics tradition by dint of his appreciation for the necessity of virtuous political participation in movements for social reform. (shrink)

Donepezil, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, has been widely cited in media and bioethics literature on cognitive enhancement (CE) as having the potential to improve the cognitive ability of healthy individuals. In both literatures, this claim has been repeatedly supported by the results of a small study published by Yesavage et al. in 2002 on non-demented pilots (30-70 years old). The factors contributing to this specific interpretation of this study's results are unclear.

Genius is highly individual and unique yet it shares a compelling quality. In this intriguing introduction Andrew Robinson uses the life and work of familiar geniuses - and some less familiar - to consider what their achievements have in common; whether its heredity, education, hard work, intelligence or just plain luck.