Coming of age in the Ivy League: on the social construction of a myth of genius Author: Terence Rajivan Edward Abstract. By referring to notable analytic philosophers, this paper raises a question of whether a certain myth of genius captures something universal: the myth that a genius is neglected or devalued by their own society, when they are alive. There are analytic philosophers who are immensely valued within their own society, valued in a way strongly suggesting they are geniuses, but they don't live in serious tension with the surrounding society. Draft version: Version 4 (29 June 2026 abstract expanded, minor edits to postscript; v3 28 June 2026 postscript added; v2 on July 24th 2024). Brown University and friends have uploaded a number of modernist magazines and journals, so that they are accessible for anyone. I read issues during the pandemic lockdown and afterwards. I was reading The Egoist, one of my favourites, and I came across the following material about the life of an Eskimo artist: "In American collections of Alaskan Eskimo art are a few carvings which, instead of following the conventional routine of those tribes, show a marvellous lifelikeness and power of characterisation: If the carving shows a long team of dogs, every dog has his own individuality, his own psychology. Inquiry into the origin of these unique works of genius shows that some years ago there lived in Alaska an old fellow who was universally recognized as weak-minded; for he insisted on spending his time in carving, to the neglect of the practical duties of hunting and fishing ; and he did not even do his carving properly in the style that centuries of tradition have fixed as proper for carving, but persisted in making his carved dogs look like real dogs ! What could be more ridiculous? So he lived and died despised. Much good it does him that now, when he is dead, his works are being greatly admired by men of a foreign race in a foreign climate." (Byington 1914: 15) It is a familiar story: that of a creative figure in a field who breaks significantly with tradition and finds recognition later, either in their own culture once it has changed somewhat or in another culture. But such familiar stories also give rise to questions. One question is whether this happens in all cultures, or all societies, or whether it is a myth of genius, in a derogatory sense of the word "myth." Removing the derogatory ingredient, we are left with a thesis: (Neglect Thesis) Anyone whose contributions to a field reach the level of genius will experience neglect by their contemporary society or else extremely suppressive actions, such as being killed. The question is: is this thesis true, or are there cultures which have geniuses without the pains of genius? I notice that in analytic philosophy, we have outstanding contributors who were embraced by their native institutions from quite an early stage, such as John Rawls and David Lewis, and they continue to flourish in these elite institutions, or else their writings are treasured there, and in the provinces of academia within the English-speaking world. Why are they not just neglected or thrown out, and left to be admired by "men of a foreign race and foreign climate"[1] or worse? An explanation for why John Rawls and David Lewis were embraced by their native institutions is that a culture is like a set of rules which anyone can in theory meet and some people meet the rules of their own culture, and so are embraced, such as Rawls and Lewis, and some meet the rules of another culture, like the Eskimo artist referred to, and so are embraced by that culture, or at least their productions are. But there are less pleasant explanations. One less pleasant explanation has to do with the qualities of a multicultural society. "I might have treated a Rawls or a Lewis differently in another society, according them a low status and shunning them as well, but in this one it is too risky. My group would suffer and a rival ethnic group would flourish." Whatever the explanation, I wonder whether cultures which do not exclude their geniuses, leaving them to be admired by men of a foreign race in a foreign climate, will not be taking yours: "You are not better than our homegrown genius." Postscript (first added 28 June 2026) After rereading this essay, I realized 2 concerns about it. One concern is that it will be read by researchers on the topic of genius from beyond philosophy and they will not have heard of David Lewis or even John Rawls, a favourite philosopher of former United States president Bill Clinton. One of my psychiatrists told me, "I've never heard of John Rawls," though she seemed a well-read person, and recommended to me a novel, an Italian novel. Rawls is a political philosopher: legend says that he brought back large-scale system-building political philosophy, after decades of minute focus on the meanings of moral sentences. For we who work in analytic philosophy today, the status as brilliant minds and outstanding contributors of Rawls and Lewis can be taken for granted. It is partly something one learns without its being said: the amount of John Rawls on courses, for example. When I did a political philosophy course in my masters at University College London, there were 4 weeks on Rawls and only 1 week on his lyrical rival, Joseph Raz: no other political philosopher had more weeks. When I taught at the University of Manchester, Rawls appeared in at least 3 weeks of Freedom & Equality courses for several years, the course is 10 weeks long. But it is also openly said. After I asked for a reduction to the amount of Rawls, which was met with intense opposition from some quarters, I was told by a postgraduate that Robert Nozick is 9 out 10 and Rawls 10 out of 10. Nozick himself declares that all political philosophers must react to Rawls: siding with him or opposing his beautiful system (1974: 83). Regarding David Lewis, as an undergraduate, not even specializing in philosophy, the lecturer would tell us stories of David Lewis, whom he suspected had some form of autism - I am not convinced. A man was walking back and forth, muttering "It's not possible," on a train; Lewis said, "Many things are possible" (Lewis being famous as a theorist of possible worlds); the man stared at Lewis and replied, "I don't talk to people who look like goats." (I hope I have remembered the story, which I heard from Doctor Julian Dodd. It was around the turn of the century.) Stories of a genius among ordinary folk are not essential to the development of my perspective though. As with Rawls, the quantity of attention is an indicator. In the 2010s, a project to preserve Lewis's writings and go through his letters even, not just his official publications, was set up at The University of Manchester, where he has no connection to: he has never worked there and to my knowledge he has never given a lecture there. This was after a reading group on David Lewis within the philosophy department. The building the philosophy department were in - they moved on my birthday to another building, which they were probably not keen on - is the Arthur Lewis Building, a new building named after Britain's first black professor, who was at the university. Personally I would worry, if I were involved in the preservation project, that it makes the philosophy department look like people who react to the preservation of the memory and achievements of Arthur Lewis by saying, "This is our Lewis, whom we want to preserve," a white man, probably from a privileged background - analytic philosophers are mostly posh white men. Is that a good idea? It was perhaps a message from the organizer: "The people who get involved either don't think about this matter or, if they do, it does not affect their actions at all." (By the way, analytic philosophy is famous for valuing argument, but it comes to look like a heritage site, for our people, when even the letters are dug into. Maybe they are giving voice to the perspective: "Arthur Lewis would never get a building named after him if he were not a black person." Or they are trying to get as close as they can to saying, "This is a department for our people only," while in a liberal society, with its legal constraints.) The second worry I wanted to raise is that I take a delight in my allusion to Margaret Mead, but others may accord this little value. Mead went to Samoa and declared that Samoan youths do not experience the tensions we Westerners associate with adolescence, a claim that has been severely disputed, by Derek Freeman. My title alludes to Mead: In the Ivy League, they have geniuses without all the troubles we associate with genius! Someone might react like this: "Neat comparison, but others are sure to engage in cross-cultural inquiries about myths of genius: there is or will be study of these. The researcher might miss this neat comparison. So what? It's just some fun for well-read intellectuals. And the overall academic muscularity of the psychological cross-cultural study - a whole book on conceptions of genius across societies - is sure to far outweigh what you have done here." I don't know what to say about that. (What are your dinner parties like? I might as well stay at home and watch Instagram?!) In addition to the two worries, someone might pose the question: do you think wilder geniuses, inevitably less in harmony with the surrounding society, are better, and more specifically are better for philosophy? Regarding philosophy, it is probably a mistake to destroy the common man's conception of a philosopher as an independent minded, but also rational, person, who does not simply go along with the conventions handed down to him. Are there not circumstances in which one values such characters over a set of people who flourish without serious tension given the norms of their society and would seemingly do likewise in any other society they happen to be born in, from basically "This is how you play the game here"? References Byington, S.T. 1914. On the Interference with the Environment. VI. The Question of Obscenity. The Egoist 1 (1): 15-16. Available at: https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr519946/ Freeman, Derek. 1983. Margaret Mead and Samoa: the Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Available at: https://archive.org/details/margaretmeadsamo00free (I have not read this properly, but I have done some research into Freeman versus Mead.) Mead, Margaret. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa. A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation. New York: William Morrow and Company. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/74750/pg74750-images.html Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. n.a. n.d. History of Analytic Philosophy. University of Manchester webpage: https://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/philosophy/research/research-areas/history-of-analytic-philosophy/ [Says: "Our most recent project, The Age of Metaphysical Revolution: David Lewis and his Place in 20th Century Philosophy, ran from 2016 to 2019 and was funded by the AHRC. The project treated Lewis as a historical figure, tracing the influences on the origins and development of his thought in a monograph co-authored by the project team (Helen Beebee, Fraser MacBride, Frederique Janssen-Lauret and Anthony Fisher). The project website includes information about Lewis and publications arising from the project (including the two-volume Philosophical Letters of David K. Lewis), video podcasts of several of the talks from our end-of-project conference (including, e.g., Angelika Kratzer, Frank Jackson and Jonathan Schaffer), some of Lewis's letters to other philosophers, links to other Lewis resources, etc." Analytic philosophy seems to attract a lot of people whose chief interest is the preservation of heritage, rather than its questions.] ________________ [1] In the case of David Lewis, one could argue that the climate condition is met.