Having just finished a cracker biography on Nietzsche I wish to discuss the ever elusive concept of ‘genius’, both in the Nietzschean sense and my incorporation of it.
I guess a definition is in order. In the Nietzschean sense the term genius is largely replaced by the term ‘ubermensch’ (or superman), a being characterized by his/her ability to transcend the‘first nature’ to arrive at a newly formed, self-configured ‘second nature’. Naturally, Nietzsche saw himself as a superman, and the somewhat ludicrous extent of this belief in a ‘second nature’ is apparent in his later work where he began to insist he was of polish noble birth (simply because he wanted to be) rather than the mundane familial lineage he was biologically linked to. His conceptualization of ‘genius’ evolved with each book he wrote; whereas, in his early work geniuses were largely conceived from a social perspective, as those great individuals who attain the ‘peak of rapture’ tapping into the esoteric substrata of nature and are thus able to propel culture forward through their insight, his later refinements of the concept focused largely on the world within these individuals, and the self-mastery involved, with less emphasis on the social implications of it. The crucial tool for the superman towards attaining his goal of self-transcendence is the conscious application of the ‘will to power’, a quality inherent in all life. The enlightened superman realizes that all morality is merely an arena for the will to power to manifest, and what is essentially good, is always that which overpowers the other lesser ideas. The superman disciplines his/her attunement to this reality and through the mere process of thought overpowers ideas that are life-taking (i.e. the christian-slave morality) and replaces these ideas with those that seek to preserve and expand the individual’s authority over all limitations. Nietzsche critiques the Darwinist idea that evolutional progression occurs to satisfy the needs of preservation, deeming preservation alone an inadequate explanation of human evolution, since it neglected to acknowledge the impinging importance of man’s unique cognitive faculties. Man’s self-awareness complicates the potentialities of evolution, and according to nietzsche, expands the purposes of human evolution to include not only self-preservation, but self-enhancement. Self-configured, these supermen may now educate the masses, and propel culture forward.
The end of his teachings is a bit of let down. I am with him up until the point that one reaches this ‘second nature’, and then it is: yeah, well, now what? why must I continue to move forward, expand? The problem I have is Nietzsche privileges truth over necessity, to him, one must confront the pessimistic reality of life, in all its horror and injustice, in order to adequately awaken the will to self-transcend, whereas i see this as an unnecessary detour… one can just as effectively cultivate a disciplined self-control on the same principles of the ‘will to power’ without needing to believe in the truths of nature’s inherent nihilism. Belief does not have to be rational, only for a sadistic purist like Nietzsche does one have to acknowledge the central nihilism of the premise. Anyways, I actually forgot how much of my present philosophy is based on Nietzsche, such is the corrosive nature of my memory.
Now genius…
on the one hand there is this idea of individuals who will themselves to a state of genius (the near limitless vertical mobility of the human condition), and on the other hand, there is the idea that the potential of genius is bestowed at birth, genetically, i.e. guidizio naturale. Krister and I had a pretty rousing debate about this one drunken night, and it centered on Stephan Hawking. Stephan Hawking is universally considered a genius, for his achievements in astrophysics, and the black-hole phenomenon primarily. I saw a great documentary on Hawking, and I was particularly interested by his confession that, had he not had his catastrophic accident which left him predominately paralyzed it was very likely the prominent ideas of his life work would never have occurred to him. He said it was because of his disability, which prevented him from the typical means of arriving at a solution (i.e. writing out equations longhand, computing, etc.) that he had to rely on geometric conceptualizations of the math, and this disciplined concentration opened up a whole new way of thinking, that the average healthy scientist would never of thought of doing. I liked this idea, there is a democratic ethos to it, however Krister, the elitist, was of another mind entirely. He insisted that Hawking was born a genius, that each human being is born with a certain cap, metaphysically speaking, that he/she cannot supercede no matter how hard they try, and that hawking’s cap was exceptional, to the point that he was capable of thinking in thirteen dimensions (i think it was thirteen). As a pragmatist, i look at it this way: one view gives us unlimited potentiality that we can strive to achieve, the other allots us a capped amount of potential that can exist in our conscience to continually demean our attempts at greatness. I doubt we could ever know are true capped potential.
But what is an act of genius? It is an ubiquitous term, applied to everything in modern culture. To some Adam Sandler is a genius. My own sentiments of genius are that
1)the potential for genius is universal. ergo, vis-a-vis, concordantly, i am a genius.
2)an act of genius has less to do with the socio-cultural impact of the ideas than with the resonance of these ideas in an individual admirer. Thus its significance is relational, but individually, not socially. This is not to say that those ideas that have impacted the world on a large scale are not acts of genius, just the valuation of the acts depend on the individual authorization, as opposed to mass hysteria.
3)an act of genius is a paradigm shift, but as the paradigm is understood in the individual admirer. in this case, the questionable talents of adam sandler may not constitute as genius due to the inconsequentiality of the achievement in the individual’s world view. That said, Richard Linklater is still a genius J
This returns me to hero worship, which is a larger category inside which genius worship resides. The influence of the genius has larger implications for the individual than mere hero worship, but they both equally have effects. I agree with nietzsche that society needs these peak figures of society through which the masses may aspire towards. There is also the mythic element of the hero, which Nietzsche would say quenches our sensibilities of the dionysian substrata of life, similar to Jung’s archetypal ideology. So long as the hero does not entirely eclipse one’s own potential, but is a source for inspiration, I see hero worship as a good thing. Making oneself a human sacrifice to an idea, is fanatical, and very, very unsanitary.