Summaries of the secondary literature on genius Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward Draft version: version 8 (29 Sep Karolka reference added, sorry, v7 28 Sep Lionel Trilling added, 25 Sep 2026 Crane on David Lewis added, 24 Sep 2026, Jefferson and Convento on Kristeva added, more to be added later) Richard Aldington. 1915. Old volumes of Mercure de France appreciate young English writers who added some interest to the early 1890s: "M. Remy de Gourmont's little notices on Mr. Arthur Symonds-models of criticism-or to find some other French writer exposing the real beauties of Mr. Yeats' earlier poetry." There is a very brief joke about its reference to an O. Hobbes. Says "to know adequately the French poetry of the last thirty years requires first of all a real enthusiasm, then a real knowledge of French, and then at least a couple of years' pretty close study." [Oh no!] "However much people may argue about the respective merits of French and English poetry there can be no doubt that in criticism the French beat us to nothing." Elegant essays on Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson in Mercure de France and a prediction of a big future for H.G. Wells. [My joke!] Says Mercure has declined: in the early days written by men of talent and you needed to be fairly brilliant to be registered. Aldington disagrees that Dowson was much influenced by Horace, but agrees with Henriette Charasson that Dowson was much influenced by Swinburne. "Dowson was an example of the sensitive, almost over-sensitive type of artist, of whose histories the nineteenth century is only too tragically full. Such a man is doomed to disappointments, to hardships, to mental sufferings which he, of all men, is least capable of enduring phlegmatically." [Isn't today the snowflake age?] Says, "The growth of commercial democracy-that gigantic conspiracy for supplying manufacturers with slave labour under another name-has made the position of artists more hazardous and more difficult than ever." "...the age contemptuously turns its back upon the poet and leaves him to starve, comfortably or uncomfortably as he can." Of the ancien regime, "It is true that Tasso was driven mad, Villon hung, and Galileo detestably persecuted under this gentle system, but there are moments when these proceedings seem almost pleasant when compared with the alternative offered by the "rulers" of the twentieth century : neglect or vulgarization." [Familiar options!] "Genius is undoubtedly an anti-social virtue ; even moderate talent totally unfits a man to earn his own living ; and then it is so disagreeable-especially disagreeable for the mob-to have to admit the supremacy of an individual ; and also geniuses are such nasty people. . . " [Nietzsche reworded in mannered English?] "The great democratic movements of the nineteenth century have not in the least alleviated the artist's lot in life... "The artist," as that word is understood—at least in reference to people like Dowson—is a person whose activities minister to the aesthetic pleasure of certain rather rare intelligences (any fool can read Shakespeare, but it needs considerable intelligence to appreciate him correctly)—of old, mostly, almost exclusively, to be found in the aristocracy. Side by side with this aristocratic art was a popular art, crude, often trivial, ill-paid, soon forgotten (like a novel by a popular author to-day). The relics of this popular art, which was not without a charm of its own, are now the delight ofdabblers in folk-lore. Popular art was all right so long as it was the art of the people, but now that it has become the possession of the middle classes it is hopeless. The middle class popular artist is now supreme, now gathers wealth and notoriety to himself from the patronage of the crowd, while the successors to the old aristocratic artists sink more and more into oblivion and silence, for the remnants of the " aristocracy " (they are mostly pork butchers) are far too busy fighting a desperate last fight with the mob to be able to spare either attention or money for so useless an affair as the arts. The conditions of modern popular art are so degrading that no man of a determined or of a distinguished mind can possibly adopt them. " What the public wants " are the stale ideas of twenty, of fifty, of seventy years ago, ideas which any man of talent rejects at once as banal." "The suicide of Middleton and Leon Deubel, the growing and (to me) painful bitterness observable in the writingsand (to me) painful bitterness observable in the writings of certain young men, are only signs of this state of affairs. The arts are now divided between popular charlatans and men of talent, who, of necessity, write, think and paint only for each other, since there is no one else to understand them. When these men of talent have a slight dash of hysteria they commit suicide or make themselves a nuisance in some other way." "In the 1890's things were just so bad that young men were driven to affected elegances and refinements, instead of to unpleasant bitterness, to charlatanism or to suicide. In the nineties popularity was (rightly) held to be a reproach, but the artists of that time still failed to realize their peculiar and anomalous position in the social order. They had seen Ruskin dominate his time by moral fulminations ; they thought they could do the same by talent. Alas ! they were mistaken..." Reference. Richard Aldington. 1915. Some reflections on Ernest Dowson. Egoist 2, 3. Available at: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:521283/PDF/ Herbert Dieckmann. 1941. "We possess a number of important studies concerning the first phase of the development of the conception in England, and the final one in Germany. But its history in France, which represents an intermediate stage, has not yet been the subject of critical research." "The underlying idea here used as a guide is that, at the end of the eighteenth century, the artistic 'genius' comes to be thought of as the highest human type, and thus replaces such earlier ideal types as the hero, the 'sage,' the Saint, the uomo universale, the cortigiano, the honnete homme'." "What is meant by the statement that the genius was considered the highest type? We mean that not only was his work conceived to be the most perfect specimen of its genre, but that it was regarded as the highest possible achievement of the human mind." French language has 2 terms. "The term avoir du genie as it occurs in most authors means nothing more than to possess great talent." "Etre un genie means that an extraordinary force has been incarnated in a man and constitutes his being, that it is indissolubly connected with his inner nature and history, and therefore gives him a unique position among men." Diderot's context: "the former ideal characters, such as the cortigiano and the honnente homme, are fading..."; "a new rank springs up in the social hierarchy: the homme de lettres and the philosophe" " The second historical condition for the positive valuation of the genius is the disintegration of the seventeenth-century theory of art and the seventeenth-century standards of taste...A work of art is no longer judged by the degree of conformity with traditional patterns and rules, but by the degree of delight it gives, and this delight is caused, not by rational structure and intellectual simplicity, but by the free play of imagination and emotion." Helvetius: " The fact that there are relatively few geniuses should not, he thinks, be explained by the rarity of extraordinary individuals, but by the rarity of the conditions favorable to the development of the faculties so widely possessed by men. The extraordinary power characteristic of genius is, for Helvetius, by no means an innate faculty of the individual, but is caused by external circumstances." For Diderot, genius is different from mere talent. "The peculiar quality which separates the genius from the rest of mankind is-Diderot maintains against Helvetius-not to be explained by chance or circumstances, but by the genius himself or by Nature which creates him." "Never would Diderot admit-except in some traditional and borrowed modes of expressions-that genius is an inexplicable gift, nor that a divine power works through it. He sees in genius a gift of Nature." "Nowhere in the work of the Abbe Du Bos is genius more than a fortunate talent occurring in all professions." Diderot says: "For the present purpose it is relevant to remember that enthusiasm endows the genius with the gift to animate and enliven whatever he describes..." "the particular power of the poet to cancel the boundaries between imagination and reality, to free himself of his own ego and to place himself in the world of his creation as if it were real, i.e., the essential gift which makes us call a work of art true poetry, is founded in enthusiasm. This appreciation of enthusiasm as a creative power is contradicted so sharply by other passages in Diderot's work." "There is hardly a description of enthusiasm during the eighteenth century which cannot be traced back to Shaftesbury's Letter concerning Enthusiasm." " The genius is reduced by Diderot to an abnormality in man and called a monster. It seems to him that genius is caused by a one-sidedness, whether this one-sidedness consist in the predominance of one sense or of one organ (by which he understands the psycho-physical unity of one part of the human body). By this one- sidedness the essence of man, i.e., the balance between the faculties of reason and of the senses, and the harmony between the single faculties of the senses, is destroyed." " The thought of explaining genius by a combination of different faculties which ordinarily do not work together in one individual, or of which generally only one is strongly developed, is one of the most interesting attempts in the eighteenth century to solve the problem of genius" "The thought of explaining genius by a combination of different faculties which ordinarily do not work together in one individual, or of which generally only one is strongly developed, is one of the most interesting attempts in the eighteenth century to solve the problem of genius. " Diderot says: " The genius creates beauties; the critic notices faults. Imagination is necessary for the one, judgment for the other. . . . The idea of 'method' is born when there are no longer any geniuses." [This remains a popular way of thinking, I believe.] "He [Diderot] gives full credit to the creative virtue of genius; nevertheless he is too fond of purity of style and harmony of classical perfection to sacrifice them to mere spontaneity and the outburst of passion." "Diderot asks to what extent the genius depends on or is affected by the characteristics of his period... Poets are born above all in periods when, through great emotion or misfortune, the imagination is stirred up and the unknown breaks in. The disposition for genius always exists, but in these periods it appears." "The achievement of the genius is, furthermore, not independent of public life and of the State. He is suffocated when a paltry, scrupulous, or pedantic logical thought rules, when there is no liberty, when the epoch has no feeling for the extraordinary and does not encourage it, when calculating economic considerations rule, when a tyrant or despot keeps public life in a state of depression and desperation." "Diderot is, after Shaftesbury, the first to speak of the working of genius not as a pure theorist or as an external observer, but out of personal experience" Reference. Herbert Dieckmann. 1941. Diderot's Conception of Genius. Journal of the History of Ideas 2(2): 151-182. Lionel Trilling. 1952. George Orwell and the Politics of Truth. "And in modern English literature there have been many writers whose lives were demonstrations of the principles which shaped their writing... Orwell takes his place with these men as a figure. In one degree or another they are geniuses [examples: two Lawrences, Yeats, Shaw, SWells, T.S. ELiot and E.M Forster], and he is not--if we ask what it is he stands for, what he is the figure of, the answer is: the virtue of not being a genius, of fronting the world with nothing more than ones simple, direct, undeceived intelligence, and a respect for the powers one does have, and the work one undertakes to do." [There are plenty of dodgy moves in Orwell's essays, such as obviously objectionable definitions.] "We admire geniuses, we love the, but they discourage us. They are great concentrations of intellect and emotion, we feel they have soaked up all the avaiable power, monopolizing it and leaving none for us. We feel that if we cannot be as they, we can be nothing. Beside them we are so plain, so hopelessly threadbare. How they glitter, and with what an imperious way they seem to deal with circumstances, even when they are wrong. Lacking their patents of nobility, we might as well quit. This is what democracy has done to us, alas--told us that genius is available to anyone, that the grace of ultimate prestige may be had by anyone, that we may all be princes and potentates or saints and visionaries and holy martyrs of the heart and the mind. And then when it turns out that we are no such thing, it permits us to think that we aren't much of anything at all. In contrast with this cozening trick of democracy, how pleasant seems the old, reactionary Anglican phrase that used to drive people of democratic leanings quite wild with rage--"My station and its duties." " [Trilling prefers everyone in their place in a hierarchy; that you have more talent for doing what is the official job of members of that other social class is irrelevant!] Reference. Lionel Trilling 1952. George Orwell and the Politics of Truth. Commentary 13 (3). Available at: https://www.commentary.org/articles/lionel-trilling/george-orwell-and-the-politics-of-truthportrait-of-the-intellectual-as-a-man-of-virtue/ For experiences Trilling is unaware of, see: https://website2.net/gowers_fodorderrida_geniusenvy.txt Taylor Branch. 1977. New frontiers in American philosophy. The New York Times August 14th 1977. Depicts Saul Kripke as a child prodigy in mathematics, who also learnt Hebrew by the age of 6 and had read all of Shakespeare by fourth grade. [Age 9-10. There is something comical about this description.] "He has written unpublished manuscripts of detective novels and a play, in Hebrew, that was performed at a summer camp in his youth. As a child, Kripke dreamed up an entire fantasy world inhabited by gremlins and kept up a running series of gremlin episodes for the benefit of his two younger sisters." At age 18, he published his first article. "His academic training was unique. He ascended directly to full professorships without ever earning a doctorate, and he never earned a doctorate because no one could ever quite decide who would presume to teach him, or in what field. The universities let him alone and admitted him to their faculties when he said he was ready." "Kripke was usually off in his own tower, writing his own thoughts, oblivious to the myths growing up around him..." And "at the age of 36, one of the most penetrating minds of our time." Article says, "Not long ago, in conversation, Professor Sidney Morgenbesser of Columbia University ranked all important philosophers according to four categories: Gods, Geniuses, Bright Guys and a catchall group called Competent Philosophers. Morgenbesser allowed only Plato, Aristotle and Kant into the circle of Gods. Though this may not be an age of philosophical gods, Robert Nozick, the Harvard political philosopher, has called Saul Kripke the one genius of our profession,” and many of Kripke's distinguished colleagues, who are not by nature given to lavish praise, say that he could one day rank with such legendary figures as John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell." "...he has already become something of a cult figure in philosophical circles—gossiped about, studied, analyzed and claimed as a kindred mind. Some philosophers lose their reserve when speaking of him. The cult phenomenon is itself remarkable, for philosophers as a group have such large egos that they correct Aristotle as they would a schoolchild, and they have such a healthy sense of skepticism that they doubt whether such things as proper names exist... Kripke has been known to bring to their brain‐twisting conclaves the atmosphere of an early Beatles concert." But Kripke is little known outside a few fields, which Branch puts down to changes in how philosophy is done: it is now mostly an arcane discipline. Kripke's major achievements has been the invention of "possible world semantics," a form of modal logic that has shown to the satisfaction of most philosophers that the common‐sense understanding of the concepts "possibility" and "necessity" in true statements can be mathematically proved. "Saul Kripke has used his fertile mathematical mind to address questions that have previously been considered too sweeping and cumbersome by analytic philosophers. He is beginning, with scholarly caution, to look at problems — such as the nature of human emotions — that have been relegated to "unfashionable" existentialists and phenomenologists. Only the rarest of philosophical minds could hope to excel in either one of these pursuits, much less span them both but Kripke has been quite special from birth." "Saul Kripke, from the apex of analytic philosophy, inspires those around him who are committed to the partnership between philosophy and mathematics. Surprisingly, Kripke himself thinks this partnership has been overblown." Article says Rawls and Nozick are hardly new, just a new coating for familiar positions. "Timidity and decorum have prevented most philosophers from asking Kripke much. He remains something of a mystery figure, and informal chatter from and about him is highly prized." "Mrs. Kripke believes Saul always had too much moral passion to restrict himself to technical pursuits." "Kripke is caught between the two dreams. His safest course would be to fulfill neither—to remain at the top of analytic philosophy by turning out good work, while sending out a stream of teasers for the romantics. He teeters at the brink of trying something more." Reference. Taylor Branch. 1977. New frontiers in American philosophy. The New York Times August 14th 1977. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/14/archives/new-frontiers-in-american-philosophy-philosophy.html William Van Der Kloot. 1983. Arthur H. Westing argues that half ofiufr literate people who ever lived are alive today. "I came to the extraordinary corollary, which surely has occured to many. If genius is distributed randomly, then half of the literate genius that has ever graced our species is here with us now. Are they really here?Are we providing the environment for this genius to flourish? Are we realizing the fruits of their genius?" " In biological science I feel sure that the answers are yes. In fact, considerably more than half the biological work of genius may have been produced in our time. Nowadays few fields are dominated by a handful of individuals: there are no Morgans, Starlings, or Pasteurs standing head and shoulders above the field. However, this is not because there are no geniuses; it is because there are so many." "In the last 30 years in fields like molecular genetics and cellular energetics, progress has been almost unbelievable." "In time the historians of science will focus on certain names and achievements; students in future generations will learn the names of a few of our contemporaries as those of giants. Yet this should not obscure the very large number of major contributors." [Does not name them, unfortunately.] Without the money provided by government and industry genius would languish. " "Indeed the establishment of NIH and NSF and the development of their programs and methods of operation certainly qualify as works of genius, requiring both creativity and statesmanship." "I also intended to comment on whether we can see all of the fruits of this genius in other fields. Are we producing the equal to all of the painting from the first literate artists to Picasso? Or all of the drama from Aeschylus to Shaw? Fortunately I realized in time that on this point I had best keep my eyes and ears open and my pen…" [C.D. Broad, a solid but also versatile philosopher, would flourish today. There are more and more solid philosophers working in English, it seems, few inspired ones. But the early decades provide so much brilliant material to process - clarify further, defend, extend its implications, etc. - that this is not necessarily a big problem.] Reference. William van der Kloot. 1983. Our Share of Genius. BioScience 33(7): 415. See also: Terence Rajivan Edward. 2026. The biologists' and medics' question again: increasing population but not great philosophers. At: https://www.instagram.com/p/DcVz4TChnNf/ Tim Crane. Obituary of philosopher David Lewis. "The death of David Lewis at the age of 60 has deprived philosophy of one of its most original and brilliant thinkers. Lewis was a systematic philosopher in a traditional sense, who created a system of thought (or metaphysical system) which attempts to reconcile the insights of modern science with pervasive elements of commonsense belief. Lewis was not a populariser and he had little to do with the more concrete and practical areas of philosophy. His work is forbiddingly abstract, and deals with many of the deepest and most difficult of philosophy’s traditional concerns, including the nature of mind, causation, necessity and being." [I have a friend who regards Lewis as chiefly fun for undergraduates.] "what is distinctive of Lewis's contribution is the formidable rigour and attention to detail with which he pursued these metaphysical projects, and the imagination and brilliance with which he re-invigorated the study of metaphysics in the last few decades of the twentieth century." "The originality and range of Lewis’s work is remarkable." "His first book, the prize-winning Convention: a Philosophical Study (1969), gave the most rigorous account to date of what a convention is, and what it means to say language is conventional. The classic Counterfactuals (1973) brilliantly defended a way of understanding the claims we make about what might have been..." "his claim that other possibilities (or 'possible worlds') are as real as our actual world. Lewis went on to defend this claim in his John Locke lectures at Oxford University..." "However, Lewis found few converts to his view that there are other possible worlds. The view met with many 'incredulous stares' (Lewis's phrase) but few philosophers can honestly lay claim to a proper refutation of it." "Despite the abstractness of the subject-matter, Lewis was justly famed for his writing style, at once elegant and informal. Strange as it may seem to an outsider, his books and essays can be read for pleasure, for their sheer intellectual brilliance, their clarity and their wit." "He studied at Swarthmore College as undergraduate and obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1967. His first academic appointment was at UCLA, and he taught there until moving to Princeton in 1970, where he remained until his death." "Somewhat eccentric in manner, Lewis was known among philosophers for his lack of small talk and his tendency to give accurate, detailed and literal answers to the most ordinary questions. Though somewhat disconcerting to new acquaintances, friends found this aspect of his behaviour part of his charm. He was a railway enthusiast and collected model trains; visitors to his model train layout sometimes observed that he had created a whole possible world in his own home." "Lewis and his wife Stephanie felt particularly at home in Australia, where they had many philosophical friends. He left there an abiding intellectual legacy, a sign of which is the honorary degree he received from the University of Melbourne (he also received honorary doctorates from the Universities of York and Cambridge). Unpretentious and modest in his tastes, he enjoyed the informality, straightforward openness and good humour of Australian society, and would often be found singing Australian folksongs during the annual conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy. He was a keen follower of Australian Rules football, and occasionally used his favourite team (Essendon of Melbourne) in humorous examples to illustrate philosophical points." [Sounds like a portrait of a high fuctioning autistic person, as he was once described to a philosophy class, but what are the marriage rates and stylistic elegance rates amongst autistics??? The Manchester comedy scene is rich in faux autistics. See jakobconman. Not sure what would be the point of marrying David Lewis if autistic, unless one desired a lot of conversation about abstract matters or from patriotic desire to help "our genius" flourish. Instagram's Karolka implies/suggests money and passport!] Reerence. Tim Crane. 2001. David Lewis (1941-2001). The Independent 23rd October 2001. Available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/CRAODL.pdf See also: Simon Baron-Cohen. The essential difference: men, women and the extreme male brain. London: Allen Lane. jakobconman. 2026. Satire of faux mental disability / neurodiverse comedy in Manchester. [My title.] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ddng5RvB4t4/ karolkashow. 2026. Marrying British Guy. Instagram 25 Sep 2026. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DdtMX3KATHM/ Ann Jefferson. 2009. Genius and its others. Jefferson argues that genius is an all or nothing concept. She suggests that the reference to pure genius in a beer advertisement, Guiness, does not actually add any informational content to saying, "Genius." There cannot be impure genius: one either is or is not a genius. [This resembles my observation that one myth of genius is: there are the few who are and the many who are not.] Genius is used as a serious term of praise but it is also cheekily trivialized, as in the beer advertisement.[The Turing Tap pub in Manchester has The Genius Bar.] The topic lends itself to aphorisms and she quotes some, one of which Robert S Lund's "Every person of genius is considerably helped by being dead." In parentheses we are told his fame rests almost solely on this quotation. She says that the most productive discussions of genius accept impurities. The notion of an individual who is a genius emerges at end of the 18th century, discussions before focusing on genius attributed to something which is not a human individual and shared by many, such as the genius of English language. There was an opposition drawn between genius and talent, talent's being regarded as the competent application of rules, and genius bringing into existence original works of art. A quotation from Condillac describes talent as producing expected effects and genius as inventing new arts or new genres within an art, and as being inimitable. Refers to Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition, popular in Germany. Genius is organic, not mechanical. Aristotle treats it as axiomatic that people of outstanding ability are melancholic. Jefferson goes on to detail Aristotelian humour theory applied to people of exceptional talent, and conveying that extremes of heat are found in inspired persons. But Aristotle says superiority is from the moderation of heat. [Does he have something like our notion of genius, without the commitment to superiority? What we call genius is what an Aristotelian would describe as an individual with greater extremes of heat, producing frenzy and inspiration, but he does not accord superiority to this condition? Or is there, furthermore, a lack of the idea of individual human creativity: the heat makes them receptive to divine messages? Anyway, we would consider Aristotle to have lots of inspiration, so is he devaluing himself? Paradox!] Plato's Ion is said to connect 'genius' to imposture: the poet's supposed knowledge is fake knowledge; the genius is a charlatan. This will only appeal to those interested in discrediting the concept, says Jefferson: rationalists of the 17th and 18th centuries regarded inspiration as dangerous. (Refers to Kant and then Derrida's concept of the counterfeit genius.) Jefferson contrasts Aristotle and Plato in a somewhat confusing way: Aristotle's superior man with Plato's inspired poet, when it seems he should contrast Aristotle's hotly inspired man with Plato's inspired poet. Amending her to make this contrast, Aristotle relates regular inspiration to physiological combination whereas Plato links it to being a vehicle used by the Gods. [There is obviously a synthesis here, which says that a certain physiology is useful for the gods; easier to transmit messages through a person with this type.] Soon we are offered a revision of Plato's depiction of the poet as charlatan: the poet is in a state of possession, so they are not deliberately misleading anyone that they have knowledge. [I've omitted her genius-and-others structure here.] In the 18th century, genius was said to be the ability to touch the human heart. In the 19th century, there was concern over the deliberate refusal to give recognition to people who deserved it most, and a new class of figures was required who would defend the reviled and the ignored. Quotes Kant: "Genius itself cannot describe or indicate scientifically how it brings about its products, and it is rather as nature that it gives the rule." Says this is like Plato: genius is defined by the peculiar inability to account for itself - how it arrives at its achievements." [This just seems an insulting redescription of "inspiration."] For Kant, the scientist can explain how they arrive at a new idea. [What?! A mathematician proves a conclusion to others, but probably in some cases it appeared to them in a dream, etc. See Karl Popper!] Genius should be attributed by others apparently, and the quality of counterfeit genius discussed by Derrida involves self-declaration. Salvador Dali's Diary of a Genius reveals he is a showman, not an artist. [Well, it does not seem there is a contradiction between self-declaration and having episodes of inspiration. Have you tried doing 1 liners better than Dali?!] Also Gertrude Stein is criticized for the words she puts in the mouth of Alice B Toklas. [All my favourite authors. It could be a reasonable way of dealing with neglect or marginalization.] Kant declares that pure genius is unviable; there must be a role for talent. Reference. Ann Jefferson. 2009. Genius and its Others. Paragraph 32 (2): 182-196. A light-hearted Instagram response by me here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZfh3WRJVxH/ [The idea that self-declared geniuses, such as Dali and Gertrude Stein, cannot be geniuses gives me these reactions: as stated above, there is no logical inconsistency here (they might have experienced enough inspiration for the label to make sense); is this a late character development project: so they have "our" unboastful personalities?; does it simply not take into account their circumstances? on foreign soil and facing prejudice, they resist being undervalued by means of boasts; would we even know of them otherwise?; is this ultimately a clash between between people of similar talent, but "I would give up in a foreign land with the obstacles they faced"?] Daniel Nolan. Nolan, a philosopher, discusses contemporary metaphysics [philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality] and its relation to past metaphysics, including to the works of great philosophers. He writes, "One reason for studying the history of philosophy generally that I sometimes come across is the suggestion that it is a good way to come into contact with many of the great minds of our discipline. Why restrict our focus to those who happen to be flourishing in the early decades of the twenty-first century when we could engage with the thought of the intellectual giants across ages past? I do not want to deny that studying historical figures is one way to read the work of some of the best philosophers so far, but it is much less clear to me that it is a particularly good way. Remember that there are many more full-time philosophers now, and in the last few decades, than there were in any comparable decades before the twentieth century. The training of our contemporaries, too, is far superior to much of the training afforded to those working on philosophical topics in the past." And: "In addition, contemporaries have more of an intellectual heritage than many of the 'great figures' of the past..." And: "Finally, selection of philosophers now is arguably more meritocratic than in the past. I do not want to deny that class and national boundaries make a big difference to who gets the opportunity to get good philosophical training and philosophical employment: but compared to the available pool in seventeenth century Britain or the second century Roman Empire, we are much more blessed today. Apart from anything else, consider the barriers that faced women in historical times: and while today is no utopia, there are many fewer barriers to women doing philosophy and having their work taken seriously." [Has there been an expansion from almost all aristocrats to some very affluent posh others being involved, though not aristocrats, with almost no exceptions?] Nolan continues: "some may be wedded to the Romantic idea that there are a handful of geniuses in each generation, and that genius will somehow find a way. But for those of us who think that the quality of a philosopher is heavily influenced by intellectual opportunities and upbringing, a look at comparative population numbers, literacy rates, and other broad social facts like that will suggest very strongly that the present and recent past will contain more of the best than many centuries in the past." Nolan considers that history keeps the best: "History, it might be argued, provides a 'filter' so that the quality of the historically notable philosophers of the past is better than the average today." Nolan introduces some suspicion: "We may also rightly be suspicious of the sorting procedures used to determine which historical figures are 'must reads' and which are in history's dustbin. Many more Neo-Platonist works survived than ancient Stoic ones, but I do not think this is because Plotinus was a better philosopher than Chrysippus: I think it has much more to do with how congenial early Christian intellectuals found the two thinkers, and similar institutional facts. Even when the texts all survive, as they do for many eighteenth century philosophers, those that are heavily studied now may depend more on the interests of those in the eighteenth and nineteenth century than any independent fact about the greatness of their work. And why should I trust nineteenth century philosophers more than my contemporaries?" [I wonder whether Nolan is giving a glimpse of a topic someone has thoroughly looked into: selection for canonical status.] Nolan nevertheless gives some reasons for attending to historical figures, including engaging with people of a very different intellectual background. [It is interesting that Hume had to argue against the view that the political system - democracy or monarchy - is irrelevant; that what makes good government is the characters of the people who implement a given system, the personalities, the combinations of virtues and vices.] Another reason Nolan considers is to understand our own tradition, but he interestingly says that this only requires reading the most influential philosophers. There may not be perfect overlap between them and the great. References. Nolan, Daniel (2007). Contemporary Metaphysicians and Their Traditions. Philosophical Topics 35 (1-2):1-18. Penultimate Ddaft available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/NOLCMA.pdf David Hume. 1741, 1747. That Politics may be reduced to a Science. In Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. Part 1. Available at: https://davidhume.org/texts/empl1/pr Ann Jefferson. Chapter 18 of her book "Genius in France", on Julia Kristeva's work. Kristeva has biographical studies of Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klien, and Colette, collected under the title "Le Genie feminin" (1999). [Display problems: accents removed. Are any of these geniuses by the English standard?] Jefferson contradicts herself, saying "Kristeva treats female genius as a given rather than defensively pleading the cause. Her generic title is a defiant assertion that women can be geniuses too, her three subjects being offered as ostensive proof for her claim." Kristeva is not concerned with insanity, despite psycholoanytic focus [!]. Kristeva, Jefferson's Kristeva, says use of the term in general is productive hyperbole. [Expressivist reading of assertions of the form "X is a genius"?] Genius, for Kristeva [amusingly/interestingly], is something we praise and encourage to prevent us from dying of uniformity, in our standardized age! The objects of biography had no interest in the theme themselves, says Jefferson. [Textual evidence over plausible psychology of an outstanding female achiever, in predominantly male field?] Melanie Klein's chief insight presented thus: "The human subject comes into being through its relations to objects (the good breast, the bad breast) and to others, but in particular through its complex negotiations with the mother figure." Colette, Kristeva's words, achieves: "a path that breaks through her own guilt to a more archaic oedipal relation with an all-powerful mother, and transforms the angry stance, . . . and even the infantile psychoses, into a reparation". Colette's genius is in realization of her sexual desires: "it is the journey to the end of the night of her passions, which she stamps with her true genius." Her life is said to be remade through writing. In the concluding essay of her book, Kristeva asks whether female genius exists. Kristeva's [peculiar] definition: "Let us call 'geniuses' those whose lives we are compelled to narrate because they are inseparable from their inventions." 20th century made better conditions for flourishing of female genius: female work force required and means of controlling fertility introduced. "Added to this, twentieth-century feminism granted women the chance to assert their own difference, whether in language, sexuality, or politics. 2 buts [my reordering]. 1 "Colette (b. 1873), Melanie Klein (b. 1882), and Hannah Arendt (b. 1906) all belong to a time when the twentieth-century conditions for female genius were not yet in place, and they demonstrated their own genius through the manner in which they broke out of the circumstances in which their respective worlds sought to constrain them." 2 Kristeva takes the argument a stage further by claiming that motherhood, which previously debarred women from genius, is now its essential feature." [Motherhood a must???] Klein "was a mother several times over, and became a psychoanalyst as a means of emerging from a particularly difficult relationship with her own mother." [Hannah Arendt was not a mother but...] For Kristeva, "this dual experience of motherhood is integral to Klein’s reflection on the infant’s relation to the mother" and pioneering work in object relations theory. "Each of Kristeva’s women geniuses had to break a mold established by a powerful male precursor-Freud in the case of Melanie Klein, Heidegger in the case of Arendt, and a rather more anodyne Willy in the case of Colette." [I wonder: does Kristeva write on this topic because of its popular interest, with little personal interest, or personal interest largely forced by circumstances, e.g. being more neglected than Levi-Strauss, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan?] Reference. Ann Jefferson. 2015. Genius in France. Princeton: Princeton University Press. "All this comes very close to suggesting not just that female genius is possible, but that genius can now only be female." Gregory Lewis. Lewis, a medical doctor and amateur philosopher, asks if the canonical great philosophers are all that great. He presents a list of top 10 great philosophers from a Leiter Reports poll: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Descartes, Socrates, Wittgenstein, Locke, Frege, Aquinas. All are dead and only 2 alive in the 20th century. He then presents a graph of the world's population, in which it rockets from the 19th century onwards. If philosophical greatness is a function of philosophical ability and philosophical ability is innate, then this is not the expected distribution. How did the top 3 philosophers emerge when the world's population was around 100 million; in the year 2000 it was 6.1 billion. Should there not be 13 Platos in Athens today (or Attica)? Lewis lists the advantages in more recent times for realizing philosophical ability: much lower infant mortality rates, less stunting and cognitive impairment, greater prospects for people who aren't rich white men, less likely to be trapped in subsistence farming, insofar as philosophy is based on previous philosophy we now have centuries of it, input from well-developed other fields assuming this benefits, technology allows us access to peers' philosophical work. Lewis finds it hard to suggests adantages in Plato's time, but proposes these: field-dilution effect - a Shakespeare today might be doing TV instead; people who would have been philosophers then work in other fields now, more collaboration between greats in the past led to greater work; detioration of cultural values in favour of producing great philosophers. But on balance, the factors favour present over past. Proposes low-hanging fruit as an explanation for Plato's success: easy early contributions. Makes this analogy: "with a high school education I can solve some basic problems in Newtonian mechanics; I can’t do any 'basic' problems in general relativity without many years more study, and I may not be clever enough even then." Second, roughly this: you could know everything then, but not now. Third, retrocractive esteem for having written a classic. Lewis asks, "Does it matter if the ancients were not that good?" Lewis proposes a less deferential attitude to the philosophers of the past. "Instead of a large secondary literature to find a good argument in Socrates’s infamous refutation of Thrasymachus near the start of The Republic, we should be more willing to believe that Socrates/Plato just made a bum argument: they were not that brilliant, and so the chances of them doing some bad philosophy is not that low." COMMENTS: Robert A Pinkus reminds us that Plato and Aristotle thought of themselves as writing within a long-existing tradition. Per suggests the article is attacking a strawman, because the standard response of professional philosophers today regarding whether the great philosophers were all that great is a "Yes, but...". John McCumber asks how many of the listed greats were in philosophy departments. Ghislain Guigon replies that the right question is how many studied philosophy at university and says most of them. Peter Alward asks whether it matters if we consider the listed philosophers as historically significant rather than great, and Olivia interprets the latter description as implying ahistorical objective superiority. [Alward replies, "It would be shocking if Hume was mediocre by our standards." Hume's desire for a long-term literary and philosophical fame may prevent him from doing certain things which pro-philosophers do. He may lack confidence that the jargon will endure, that the degree of hair-splitting engaged with by analytic philosophers will appeal to readers 200 years hence, etc. Literary figures sometimes write essays and he may be more like a very philosophically-interesting literary essayist.] David Sobel says it probably takes time to sort out the great from those who merely appealed to their time, so we should not expect to know greats now. A focus on the relationship between genius and problem-solving begins with PeterJ's interesting "rhetorical question" - "What sort of genius solves no problems?" - and is picked up by Incredulous. Incredulous seems open to various great artists being geniuses but not solving problems. PeterJ says you have to solve problems to be a great philosopher. (DocFEmeritus agrees, distinguishing philosophy from art.) HeraclitusDrunkOnFire says the problem-theory-solution was not widely used in Plato's day. ZTW asks, "Why do you think philosophy is about solving problems rather than, say, figuring out what the insolvable problems are and showing us better and worse ways to think about them? Solving problems is for engineers, not philosophers." Later Terence Blake calls the problem-solving conception scientistic [i.e. wrongly taking the natural sciences as revealing how all disciplines should be pursued] and attributes it to Lewis. PeterJ rejects this view, much later in discussion, and says a list of top 10 philosophers none of whom solved problems would be dubious. David Wallace replies that Newton, Darwin, and Turing solved problems so well, it stop being counted as philosophy. Terence Blake favours a French approach, in which philosophy is more about raising problems. Ancient Student says that it is absurd to suppose that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are cleverer or more gifted than contemporaries, who have the benefit of 1000s of years of philosophy. [Without wishing to encourage deferential research, I suspect they are more gifted than most or all contemporaries, assuming Plato's Socrates!] Responds to Lewis's assessment of secondary literature on Socrates and Thraysymacus, saying the argument faults are not self-evident. Seems to misread Lewis's main point as a dismissal of the relevance of long-past philosophy. CF says that we should approach historical texts charitably, aware that distance makes them difficult to interpret, and reads Lewis as encouraging quick dismissals. Says that Lewis depends on an impausible cumulative conception of philosophy: simply adding more and more knowledge. babygirl says that Plato was a genius in ways which are not quantitatively measurable, so there should not be 13 Platos in modern day Attica (Athens), contrast to what Lewis claims. Also he invented philosophy. [Henrique says something similar. I agree. There are focuses promoted by Plato's Socractes, on defining and redefining in the fact of objections, which are a way of doing philosophy which would not occur to many others independently and have proved valuable.] Ben reminds babygirl that her perspective leaves a problem of why the clustering in ancient times, and babygirl's guess is that the culture makes us vapid and stale. Paolo says being smart by itself is useless, suggesting it is what you do with the smartness. He makes comparisons with Western popular music, suggesting Prince is a better at playing instruments than the Beatles but more Beatles songs will last. David interestingly analyses why philosophy students and lecturers have to read the original texts, unlike physicists. (1) A hazing ritual marking a rite of passage to become a philosopher. (2) Philosophers are expected to be conversant in classic texts. (3) The bookish temperaments of philosophers. (4) Lack of confidence in contemporary work, especially what is better or worse, to "close the book on the old masters." JT adds to the analysis: the heavier use of formal methods in physics removes the need for reading original texts there. David Wallace says he used to agree with JT, but now he says that there are comparatively rapid mechanisms to resolve disputes in physics and an accepted conception of progress. Wallace says Newton and Einstein were good writers, but now know much more about their research areas, leading to preference for textbooks. Sket says textbooks present better, regardless of knowledge gains, and Leibniz's calculus notation was clearer than Newton's. Wallace says examples used in textbooks are not mere presentational, but gains in knowledge. [Note for me: Strathern on examples as merely illustration.] Sket says category of the presentational is being overly narrowed. Paolo says in philosophy content cannot be dissociated from form: there is an intellectual experience when reading original. Steven Levine says philosophy cannot break completely with its past, because it is partly about critically assessing what structures our thinking and this comes from the past. Robert A Pinkus asserts there is secret teaching within Plato, causing repreated rereading. David Wallace responds to Lewis's "Should be 13 Platos in today's Attica" argument, saying there is a selection effect in picking out Attica, because we would not unless Plato was originally there. [Obvious defence of Lewis?] JC registers the absence of women on these lists. Mike interestingly says wouldn't population increases, if they had the expected effects, also improve identifying great philosophers, justfying trust in the current list. David says people are dumbed down today: after a day's work, they consume garbage - lowbrow entertainment. David Wallace says he would write a rejoinder, but he only read David's comment because he was flipping through webpages to kill time, leading to a performative contradiction. PeterJ says it would be good if this were turned into a dialogue, suggesting it is of the level of Plato's dialogues or higher. Rollo says Lewis's article seems to assume a craft or skill of philosophy, when there are several bound merely by family resemblance. "Greatness" refers to grandness of vision, not these skills to an exceptional degree. Also various figures became great philosophers by pursuing a question at the right time, as with physics. It is probably easier to achieve in periods of revolutionary science. Keith Mackie suggests Lewis has a conversation with people who work in ancient philosophy. [The article reminds me of "Lectures are obsolete now, because it is all on the Internet", a memorable argument of some interest, which avoids the slog of examining data.] Jeff Heikkinen suggests the Leiter Reports poll Lewis uses is about significantly past philosophers only, so it would be skewed. Robert Lockhart says the fields has only a certain number of spaces for great philosophers, making a comparison with pop music: it has numerous good singers, but only a few slots for pop stars. Later Paul Brownsey says that if the top 10 disappeared, we would elevate the next 10, looking upon Malebranche as we look upon Kant. [Doubt this. Won't be surprised by: "There is just no genius here."] Gregory Lewis replies to various people, including this one, saying it is not enough to remove the puzzle of skewedness. Hemsager responds to Lewis's suggestion that the great philosophers had low hanging fruit to pick - easy contributions, because of the early stage they wrote at. He says that these seem low-hanging fruit only in hindsight, like the mathematical contribution of referring to zero, from Indian maths. (Jared agrees.) Also raises the puzzle of whether it is absurd to call someone not great, if you are clearly lesser. The interestingly named PleaseStoptheRankings complains about the obsession amongst professional philosophers with ranking philosophers. They too have preferences, but don't try to turn these into attempts at objective ranking. Also we are told that a focus on innate talent is what drives off women from philosophy, accroding to Sarah-Jane Leslie. Says women don't sit around ranking in their conversations, unlike men. [Do the women analytic philosophy attracts generally accept a rational actor approach to talent assessment, which more or less tells you to sometimes fail or do worse at exams? "Who is going to do what with this knowledge?" etc. Analytic philosophers need to know quite a bit about talent, because it seems a waste making certain subtler points, if they cannot be processed by expected audiences.] Stephen Voss complains about the Lewis's list of greats being obviously skewed to the (white) Western tradition; Isaac much earlier says it is skewed towards analytic philosophy; Lidia asks about the Incas and native Americans and the Mayas. MC makes an analogy with how earlier YouTubers flourished because of lack of competition, but now suffer from failing to meet community guidelines. [I am surprised that the comments don't feature that analytic philosophy is reliability oriented, rather thqan greatness oriented. An analogy with haiku poetry: I am a more reliable poet than Srini, by my standards - I rarely fall below my 7/10; but Srini has more entries in my best-haikus-from-online-publications, e.g. "Thorn's story/ Is red rose/ The villain?" Also (less surprising): if we assume there are philosophical talents - in making distinctions, defining, detecting entailments, etc. - to what extent is high status the outcome of strategy too, e.g. earlier Socratic reviewers of Rawls avoids assessing his recommendation of fair equality of opportunity, I presume because there is surely discussion of fair eop somewhere before Rawls, even if in private clubs, and they consider it strategically astute not to go over material again in public.] References. Gregory Lewis. 2016. Are History's "Greatest Philosophers" All That Great. Daily Nous blog post. Available at: https://dailynous.com/2016/04/26/were-historys-so-called-greatest-philosophers-all-that-great/ (Followed by numerous comments. Here is my list of commentators, in reverse order: (1) Lewis Campbell; (2) Lidia (3) jared (4) BradleyB (5) MC (6) Paul Brownsey (7) Akinola Olanrewaju, says the genius was Socrates, but Plato made massive contribution, recording it; (8) al; (9) Lewchuk; (10) Cody; (11) Greg Gautier; (12) Stephen Voss; (13) Pleasestoptherankings; (14) [Greek name, computer display issue]; (15) Hemsagar; (16) Carl Brownson; (17) Gregory Lewis; (18) Robert Lockhart; (19) Jeff Heikinen; (20) Keith Mackie; (21) Rollo; (22)PeterJ; (23) Paolo; (24) Jamie; (25) PeterJ; (26) David Wallace; (27) David (28) Henrique; (29) Robert A Pinkus; (30) Mr Rorty; (31) Jamie; (32) Isaac; (33) Ben; (34) Gregor MacDonald (35) Mike; (36) JC; (37)David Wallace;(38) Jamie; (39) PeterJ; (40) Terence Blake; (41) Stephen Levine (42) Skef; (43) babygirl (44) Thor; (45) Brian K; (46) CF; (47) Russell; (48) Ancient Student; (49) Laura Grams; (50) Stephen Levine; (51) Taylor Carmen - complains of Whiggish history; (52) post-doc (53) Daniel Nolan - advertises his own work, gets a summary above; (54) Hey Nonny Mouse; (55) ZTW; (56) DocFMeritus (57) HeraclitusDrunkonFire; (58) Incredulous; (59) DoubleA; (60) Sobel; (61) David Livingstone Smith; (62) Olivia; (63) Peter Alward; (64) Ghislain Guigon; (65) John McCumber; (66) Per; (67) Bjorn Remseth; (68) RKO; (69) mhl. (70) John Schwenkler; (71) recent grad) See also: Terence Rajivan Edward. 2026. The biologists' and medics' question again: increasing population but not great philosophers. At: https://www.instagram.com/p/DcVz4TChnNf/ Elisabetta Convento. Says Kristeva discloses her own genius in writing these books on Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, and Colette, whom she has transferential relations to. In her book on Hannah Arendt, Kristeva defines the geniuses that concern her as "hose who force us to discuss their story because it is so closely bound up with their creations, in the innovations that support the development of thought and beings, and in the onslaught of questions, discoveries, and pleasures that their creations have inspired." Says Kristeva's interest in the feminine has occupied most of her career, e.g. "Revolution in Poetic Language" (1974), "Black Sun" (1987). Quote from Kristeva: "Beauvoir never lost her rage against metaphysics because it imprisons woman in her status of the Other, consigning her to the realm of facticity and of immanence". And from Convento: "de Beauvoir’s struggle to improve women’s conditions in general did not fully comprise the realization of the female subject in its singularity, which is precisely what Kristeva aims for with her development of the concept of a female genius." Convento on Kristeva on feminine: "the feminine which is present with some differences in women as well as in men... consists primarily in a creative force providing a source of resistance to the evils of history, as well as to the awareness of the inevitability of death." "The supposed spontaneity of genius and of poetic creation is strongly denied, for example, by Kristeva’s master Roland Barthes in Mythologies (1957)". "Kristeva’s idea of genius is presented as an overcoming of the traditional concept of ingenium as innate gift or talent, to embrace instead the genius as expression of techne, the human ability to convert creativity into action." There is much talk of a focus on singularity, connected to Duns Scotus. "It does not appear unjustifed to venture the hypothesis that with the triptych of the Female Genius Kristeva wants to propose a secular and feminine version of the Trinity." [Bizzare to me!] "Overall, the main features of the female genius can be summarized in three central ideas: the importance of relationships, the coincidence between life and thought and, ultimately, a peculiar temporality of birth and renewal." "at times, Kristeva’s voice and her refections mingle with those of her geniuses, so that we are unable to fully distinguish who is who. In a sense, by writing on her three female protagonists, Kristeva rewrites herself as well." "the climax of the trilogy is reached in the volume devoted to Colette, who challenges moral and social norms not only by disregarding interdictions and taboos but by making them the subject of her writing. The author was able to let her creativity fow in a triumph of sexual and linguistic jouissance so as to overcome the neuroses that Freud attributed to women. Kristeva has often stated that the French author is a writer in 'osmosis' with writing, which is approached with a feverish voracity because for Colette it is a physical act, a gesture not just of the hand but of the whole body." The 20th century: "motherhood, which was previously considered as an obstacle to female genius, is now placed into its very core." "Kristeva’s position, as well as her concept of the female genius, which aims at overcoming sexual difference by proposing a notion of the feminine that can be claimed by men as well, is quite different from that of Luce Irigaray, who proposes a concept of female subjectivity based on sexual difference." "Genius, as Roland Barthes argues, consists in changing places, in being reborn, in surprising others by being where it is not expected to be." Footnote 1 says, "The idea that Kristeva’s concept of the female genius can be viewed as an anticlimax, because Kristeva seems to make it accessible to all, can be found in Ann Jefferson." [I didn't register that!] Alison Jaspers discusses motherhood and Cecilia Sjoholm discusses the cult of natality in Kristeva’s theory of the female genius. Reference. Elisabetta Convento. 2022 (2023?). Female genius. In Maria Margaroni (ed.), Understanding Kristeva, Understanding Modernism. London: Bloomsbury. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/98774620/Female_genius Note to self: write on how William James says, "Genius... means little more than perceiving in a non-habitual way," but can there not be a case of someone's being a genius at something because they can do what you do habitually but they don't appear to be in a very good position to do this. A paradox even!