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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Yoga practitioners have been using meditation practices for millennia. These practices have evolved as tools for improving health, healing emotional imbalance, and connecting with one's purpose and direction in life. Meditation provides a transcendence of ordinary mental activity into the realm of what is spiritually described as connecting you with pure consciousness. In colloquial terms it could be called finding your "genius," the aspect of yourself that is full of intuition and creativity, insight and purpose, an innate brilliance. Yogis (...) consider it finding the whole of who you are. (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)

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.

Offers an exploration of what it means to be a Jew, rooted in the Talmudic tradition of argument and conflict.

In his book Wojciech Sady attempts to reconstruct the structure of the fundamental transformations that can be described as the relativistic and quantum revolution. Referring to rich historical material and Ludwik Fleck’s reflections on the development of scientific knowledge, the author tries to explain how it is possible that “scientists began to think differently than they had been taught.” Sady’s work, although not devoid of somewhat weaker points, is a brave and thought-provoking attempt to propose his own explanation of the (...) mechanisms of the aforementioned transformations. (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 paper aims at developing an understanding of conspirational thinking as a means for dealing with epistemic and practical insecurity. This strategy of coping with insecurity results in the construction of a metaphysical system, which is centered around the idea of a nearly omnipotent conspirator. The paper argues that there is a relatedness between the Cartesian cogito and conspirational thinking. The latter can be conceived of as an aberration from the philosophical search for a fundamentum inconcussum. After the relevance of (...) the thought of Descartes for the current theorizing on conspirational thinking is explained with reference to its historical context in the first part of the paper, the second part shows that the motive for conspirational thinking lies in the repudiation of responsibility in the face of an often overwhelming perception of insecurity. The third part of the paper reflects on possibilities for the weakening of this ethical motive for conspirational thinking building on the Cartesian concept of generosity. (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 of creativity, 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)

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)

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 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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

The first comprehensive study of the roots of the concept of genius in Kant's understanding of nature and his notion of the artist.

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)

This chapter contains section titled: Two Kinds of Eugenics Technological Possibilities Moral Perplexities Hither Posthumanity?

According to the Song critic Guo Ruoxu, the last five laws by Xie He are "open to study," while qiyun 氣韻 "necessarily involves an innate knowledge; it assuredly cannot be secured through cleverness or close application, nor will time aid its attainment. It is an unspoken accord, a spiritual communion; 'something that happens without one's knowing how'".1 For Guo Ruoxu, although the qiyun within a work refers to the quality of a painting and cannot be identical with the qiyun of (...) the artist, the ability to produce a painting replete with qiyun is determined by the painter's innate mental disposition. This idea has been echoed... (shrink)

Twenty years ago in "Turing's Two Tests for Intelligence" I distinguished two distinct tests to be found in Alan Turing's 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence": one by then very well-known, the other neglected. I also explained the significance of the neglected test. This paper revisits some of the points in that paper and explains why they are even more relevant today. It also discusses the value of tests for machine intelligence based on games humans play, giving an analysis of (...) some twentieth century TV game shows and how they relate to the tests for machine intelligence in Turing's paper and in some other tests for machine intelligence that have been proposed since. Their value in distinguishing between 'wise' and simply ‘clever’ AI is discussed. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Work on Stanley Cavell in contemporary political theory tends to foreground Cavell’s reading of Emersonian moral perfectionism, but this aspect of Cavell’s thought is often left out of feminist readings of his work. In this paper, I give an overview of Cavell’s importance to political theory, and I also trace two Cavellian-inspired feminisms: Sandra Laugier’s ordinary language inflected ethics of care and Toril Moi’s understanding of feminist theory as the close and careful reading (...) of examples. I argue that Cavellian-Emersonian moral perfectionism enhances these feminist readings of Cavell because it helps us explain certain practices in feminist activism, such as resisting conformity, acknowledging the limits of our understanding and being receptive to other members of our feminist community. (shrink)

Work on Stanley Cavell in contemporary political theory tends to foreground Cavell’s reading of Emersonian moral perfectionism, but this aspect of Cavell’s thought is often left out of feminist rea...

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Work on Stanley Cavell in contemporary political theory tends to foreground Cavell’s reading of Emersonian moral perfectionism, but this aspect of Cavell’s thought is often left out of feminist readings of his work. In this paper, I give an overview of Cavell’s importance to political theory, and I also trace two Cavellian-inspired feminisms: Sandra Laugier’s ordinary language inflected ethics of care and Toril Moi’s understanding of feminist theory as the close and careful reading (...) of examples. I argue that Cavellian-Emersonian moral perfectionism enhances these feminist readings of Cavell because it helps us explain certain practices in feminist activism, such as resisting conformity, acknowledging the limits of our understanding and being receptive to other members of our feminist community. (shrink)

In this article, I develop an account of genius inspired by Kristeva’s writings on feminine genius in order to argue that certain ill and disabled people should be considered geniuses in the face of social conditions and medical practices that too often marginalize, restrict, and silence them. In contrast to Kristeva’s notion of feminine genius, which relies on an Oedipal developmental story, I argue that we should understand genius as (1) the intimate revolt of (2) a (...) singular subject who (3) occupies a marginalized social position and who, through their revolt, (4) creates a work. Conceiving of genius in this way, I contend, opens up the possibility of recognizing Kristevan genius from marginalized positions other than that of women while remaining true to Kristeva’s account of the intimate. Having developed this account, I offer an example by suggesting that Susan Wendell is one such genius. Finally, I move on to argue that, by taking Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic seriously, we may discover genius among those with “severe cognitive disabilities,” and discuss Eva Kittay’s daughter, Sesha, as an example. My hope is that this concept may help us be attentive to the singular accomplishments of those who face exclusion and silencing as a result of illness or disability. (shrink)