ARMIES OF ONE

The following are excerpts from the section The Genius and the Scholar of my book Nunc Dimittis---

Here Comes The Genius.
They say that geniuses are born only once in a generation, and that goes not even for every great nation in its own right, but for the whole of humanity, which, incidentally, gives us no account for Shakespeare and Galileo, Bach and Handel, Hegel and Beethoven, or Wagner and Verdi, each pair born in the same year, not even to mention Michelangelo and Raphael, Goethe and Schiller, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and scores of others born to the same nation and to the same vocation, and separated in time by just a handful of years.
Not that we should swing to the other extreme, for sure, like Lichtenberg, jokingly suggesting that at least once a year everybody is a genius. Nor can we say that the truth is somewhere in between the two extreme points, for it is possible for a generation or two, or maybe even more, to pass without a genius born to them. There is no law of nature or any demonstrable causality to relate genius to the timeline of history. Had there been such a law, I would imagine it would have stipulated genius showers somehow occurring more during tragic times, rather than during the times of prosperity, but luckily, in its absence, I do not have to defend my rather shaky proposition. It comes out of equating genius with the heroic, and therefore, tragic, according to Nietzsche, but genius, of course, carries his own heroism around with him, and thus creates tragedy equally, whether in war or in peace.
What follows from all this is that perhaps the incidence of genius is as random and unpredictable, as genius itself. But what do we know about genius in the first place, how do we define what we are talking about?
Leaving aside the apparent platitude that it takes a genius to discern a genius, let us attempt to probe into the mysterious nature of genius. According to Edgar Allan Poe, who was a dark genius in his own right, “What the world calls a genius is the state of mental disease, arising from the undue predominance of some one of the faculties.” It is not surprising, with this definition, that Poe should go further, to claim that men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. I am more impressed though with the less macabre representation of genius in John Stuart Mill’s treatise On Liberty, where he says:
“Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than other people and less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of molds society provides, in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.”
It would, therefore, seem much more practical than tinkering with the mystery of genius to make its narrow definition a matter of personal opinion, while accepting as a working definition of genius the restless spirit who is extremely uncomfortable inside the box assigned to him by society and at the same time is obsessed with the pursuit of his life-idea. In this sense I could go further than J. S. Mill, who, in the same treatise On Liberty, talks, rightly so, about genius being only able to “breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.” In my opinion, genius, indeed, needs social freedom, to pursue his idea, but he is far from being free himself, being possessed by it, like no slave has ever been possessed by his master.
But whatever genius is, it accounts for an exceptional personality, which stands out of the anthill, to which it was born and well justifies the creation of this special section dealing with the phenomenon of the exception as opposed to the previous section on society, dealing with the phenomenon of the rule.

Here Comes The Schoolman.
It would be inexcusable to drop the subject of genius after so many questions have been left hanging in the preceding entry, and rest assured that this subject has not been dropped. After all, our sectional title has the word genius prominently featured in it, which means that we will be returning to it again and again. As soon as the present sectional preamble is finished, we will continue the general discussion started in Here Comes The Genius, right where we left off.
The word schoolman in the title is a throwback to the old section title The Genius And The Schoolman that has long since been changed. There is a good reason, though, for me not to change it here. The “schoolman” of (502) is by no means identical to the “teacher” of (504). In order to avoid any unnecessary confusion on this account, I was almost tempted to rename my schoolman as the scientist. I was quick to realize however that this would have led to several other confusions, seriously distorting my original purpose, which I could not allow to happen. Therefore, any potential remaining confusion between the schoolman and the teacher is regrettably unavoidable, unless and until I might figure out something else in the future.
The personality of the schoolman is contrasted with that of the genius, but this does not mean that there is a contrast here between the extraordinariness of the one and the ordinariness of the other. The schoolman is also an exceptional person, and, just as the genius, and, perhaps, with an even greater public recognition, is standing out of the anthill, to which he was born, or in which he resides.
He is a scientist, a scholar, a researcher, and an educator. The question is, why do I call him the schoolman? In Webster’s Dictionary, the primary meaning of ‘schoolman’ is “one of the medieval university teachers of philosophy, logic, and theology.” I confess, however, that the word itself comes from Hobbes, who uses it very unkindly, in reference to “deceived philosophers and deceiving Schoolmen,” such as in his Leviathan (I:3). Having fallen in love with the word ‘schoolman,’ thus acquired from Hobbes, I am however not using it in the Hobbesian sense until later in the section, but, for the time being, following Nietzsche’s distinction between the genius and the scholar in Jenseits-206, here quoted with several omissions in condensed form:
"Compared to a genius, that is to one who either begets or gives birth (for a clarification of this see my entry Genius: The Question Of Gender, later in this section), taking both terms in their most elevated sense, the scholar (or “schoolman,” in my current usage), the scientific average man, always rather resembles an old maid: like her, he is not conversant with the two most valuable functions of man. (Funny how in translation, the gender-neutral word Mensch mutates into an inferred masculinity, with a hilarious outcome in this case.) Let us look more closely, what is a scientific man? He has industriousness, patient acceptance of his place in rank and file, evenness and moderation in his abilities and needs; for example, that bit of independence and green pasture, without which there is no quiet work, that claim to honor and recognition, the sunshine of a good name, the constant attestation of his value and utility, which is needed to overcome, again and again, the internal mistrust, which is the sediment in the hearts of all dependent men and herd animals…" (I wonder, if being “dependent” in one’s Dasein debars an otherwise independent thinker? I don’t think so.)
…Brutally hurtful, in a less straightforward, but much more insulting, albeit not necessarily unfair, manner than Hobbes’s, the Nietzsche description of the scholar/scientific man (the English word scholar is used in lieu of such original German terms as Wissenschaftlicher Mensch and Gelehrte, but Nietzsche is not using them with any particular consistency throughout his writings, reflecting a certain equivocality, exhibited in the title of his Part Six of the Jenseits, for instance, which is Wir Gelehrten, or We Scholars, in the English translation) seems to bring my schoolman down to the level of all dependent men and herd animals, but it is not quite the case. It appears that the schoolman is not a qualitatively inferior species in Nietzsche, but it is basically a number of lower rungs in the ladder of exceptionality. The following passage in Wir Gelehrten, in Jenseits, makes this point the best: "People should finally stop confounding philosophical laborers, and scientific men generally, with philosophers. It may be necessary for the education of the true philosopher that he himself has also once stood on all these steps on which his servants are still standing. Perhaps, he himself must have been critic, and skeptic, and dogmatist, and historian and also poet, and collector, and traveler and solver of riddles and moralist and seer and free spirit and almost everything, in order to pass through the whole range of human values and value feelings, and be able to see with many different eyes and consciences. But all these are merely preconditions: his task demands that he create values.
Those philosophical laborers, after the noble model of Kant and Hegel, have to determine and press into formulas, whether in the realm of logic or political (moral) thought or art, some great data of valuations, that is, former positings of values, creations of value, which have become dominant and are, for the time, called truths. It is for them to make everything that has happened and been esteemed so far easy to look over, to think over, intelligible and manageable, to abbreviate anything long, even time, and to overcome the entire past, -- an enormous and wonderful task. Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, thus it shall be!" (Jenseits, 211)

For more on the profound distinction between a genius and a scholar, this time the unlikely courtesy of Leo Strauss (!!!), here we are.---
Occasionally you can find spiritual and intellectual affinities in the most unlikely places. With my extremely negative attitude toward modern American neoconservative movement, who could ever suspect me of being able to write glowingly, and most positively, about the acknowledged founding pillar of the neoconservative ideology Leo Strauss?! And yet, this is exactly what I am doing, for if we can learn anything from history, it is that what has been always known to be a well established fact may in fact turn out to be a well established lie. In other words most things are not what they appear to be, and the case of Leo Strauss is one of them.
No discussion of the Genius and the Scholar can be complete without citing the opinion of the German-born Jewish-American political philosopher (he wisely calls himself a scholar, which, to him, is inferior to being a philosopher) Leo Strauss. It is that selfsame Leo Strauss who has been declared the spiritual father of the neoconservative movement in modern America, and who has also been suspected of fascist tendencies and a devilish attempt to take over power in the United States, using specific methods much reminiscent of those developed by… Vladimir Ilyich Lenin! We are not going to discuss these sinister plans and activities here, though, as our purpose in this entry is quite specific and limited, but we do have a separate entry for Strauss in the Tikkun Olam section, which I am presently sending my reader to, unless he/she still remembers it from earlier reading.
Insofar as our subject here is concerned, I find the view of Leo Strauss on the title difference of the present section remarkably in tune with my own thinking. This view is not original, of course, but well formulated. Strauss makes the distinction between a great thinker and a scholar to the effect that the great thinker is bold and creative, whereas the scholar is cautious and methodical. The thinker fearlessly takes on the world face to face and tackles the biggest problems there are in a groundbreaking and original manner. The scholar is a secondhand thinker, so to speak. He deals with the philosophical problems indirectly by describing the ideas presented by the thinkers, and comparing them in a critical and well organized fashion.
Well, my hat off to Leo Strauss (sic!) for his wonderful contribution to this section!

…It is now hopefully clear, what I meant by the original sectional title The Genius And The Schoolman, that this is by no means intended as a mocking disparagement of the Schoolman, but only to point out that I am thereby talking of the whole range of the ladder of exceptionality, from its lower rungs to the highest.
Having said that, nor does it mean that I am holding this ladder in such an awe that I would refrain from a scathing attack on the experts and academics, who have been enjoying the privileged status of exceptional worth, but, in effect, are charlatans and impostors, having gained unmerited access to the green pastures of intellectual labor. In this sense, the Hobbesian “deceiving Schoolman” is very much à propos.

Here Comes The Statesman.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, a statesman is a person who shows wisdom and skill in conducting the affairs of the state, and in treating public issues, as well as one experienced or engaged in the business of government. I can imagine a wide range of talented amateurs-turned-statesmen, in many cases, “statesman” being an epithet bestowed on people quite liberally, who do not qualify as either geniuses or schoolmen, in the strict sense of these terms. Once again, however, this section is not about the narrow meanings of such words, but it covers an extended field of exceptionality, in contrast to the previous section on the Collective, where the field is the rule.
In my Collective entry Leaders and Followers, I may seem to have contradicted the opening paragraph of this entry with this closing thought there:
“My concluding thought is that, in the clear distinction between the exception and the rule, while the great leaders of history have indisputably been exceptional personalities, their personae have to be substantially different from the persona of a genius-recluse. The latter shuns the herd (which is by no means to suggest that he can subsist on his own), whereas the genius-leader cannot live without it.
However, in both these cases, we are looking at truly exceptional personalities, both possessed by genius. I must therefore reiterate that all other kinds of leaders, who are called geniuses just because those who call them so cannot correctly count the number of feet in a centipede (see the Lichtenberg aphorism above), do not qualify for the exceptionality status, and organically remain part of the herd.
We shall return to the leaders of genius in the next big section, but as for the rest of them, let them remain where they rightfully belong, in the Collective.”
There is no contradiction here, however, and the clue is my use of the word statesman, rather than leader, in this entry. Not every leader is a statesman, and, conversely, not every statesman is a leader of the masses, in the sense the word leader was used in that Collective entry. A non-genius statesman can be exceptional as a “schoolman,” that is, as an intellectual laborer, in which case he would be able to exhibit wisdom and skill in conducting state affairs and in treating public issues, but he should always experience discomfort in a public setting, where his leadership qualities are in demand.
In my judgment, only the genius leader enjoys his communion with the masses as he objectificates his will in those masses, in the idea of the state, and in what I have called the nation-idea, while a different type of creative genius objectificates his in the métier of his own creative vocation.
A non-genius statesman is incapable of such objectification. Therefore, as an exceptional personality, he is definitely incapable of honest enjoyment of any communion with the rule, the herd, which to him becomes synonymous with the mob, and must be forever frightening. He does not want to be anybody’s leader, and, by a logical progression, anybody’s follower, either. This aversion to being part of the herd is complicated under the conditions of an authentic totalitarian state, where even exceptional persons become followers of the totalitarian ideal, and their acceptance of the Führerprinzip, in which case they may become dedicated followers of the nation-state’s leader, has a different quality from that exhibited by the lovers of the follow the leader game, who are playing it for its own sake.
As for those millions of “leaders” who love to play the game for its own sake, and do not mind playing the follower, as long as they are, at the same time, allowed to be leaders of others, I have nothing but contempt for them, and to me, their positions of leadership have nothing extraordinary about them, and make them no more eligible for the exceptionality status than they would make any sheep that happens to find itself in front of a moving herd. (I have a particular disdain for all sorts of political activists and functionaries in a free society, where follow the leader turns into an ugly, dangerous game {see my entry Follow The Leader in the Collective section} employing certain elements of the totalitarian rule, but without any rationale for it, and with no redeeming value. I must confess, however, that this disdain is perhaps hypertrophied to a large degree, reflecting a personal prejudice on my part, but the danger to free society from these creatures hasn’t been that much exaggerated, particularly, in the light of fairly recent developments within American society, caused by what amounted to an attempted power grab by the George W. Bush Administration.)

Here Comes The Teacher.
Of all social occupations, none is of greater importance than that of the teacher. What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, writes Cicero, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? (De Divinatione, II). However, the greater importance means the greater responsibility, and the expectation of excellence in teaching puts such a high onus on the teacher that no wonder that so few have measured up to the challenge, that the teacher has become the butt of numerous jokes, all boiling down to the assertion that the teacher is a failed and incompetent scholar. Compare this to George Bernard Shaw’s "He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches," or in exactly the same vein, Oscar Wilde’s "Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching."
Whether it is the pedantic intransigence of the academic tutor of yore, or sheer incompetence of the public school system in our modern mass society, the result is essentially the same. The teaching profession must have fallen so short of its billing that the end result is nothing better than scandalous.
The truth of the matter is that, as I wrote in my Teachers and Students entry, “education may be ‘public,’ in the sense that both the teacher and the student belong to the social aspect of schooling. However, teaching, at its best, is an utterly individualistic experience, a vigorous ‘chemical’ reaction between the educator and his ward, a communion of two vibrant minds of comparable value, one old and one young, both capable of independent thinking. It is now an experience qualitatively different from the situation in the ‘egalitarian’ classroom, where the genius and the idiot are treated the same, by law and by the rules.
“A passionately dedicated instructor must not fail to educate his students up-front on the general purpose of all instruction, which is not to indoctrinate, not to force knowledge on the student-victim of such scholarly aggression, but to inspire the student to think for himself, to facilitate his natural scientific curiosity, to let him become an explorer of terra incognita, rather than a follower in other people’s footsteps.”
I may be mocked on the premise that my Socrates-and-Plato, Aristotle-and-Alexander idyll must perforce be a long-lost fossil of a long-gone aristocratic past, but this is hardly the point. My “idyll” is by no means a historical anachronism, but a timeless combination of great professional competence, and proper mental attitude, in the exceptional personality of a teacher in search of a perfect student.
As for those teachers, for whom teaching is “just a job” or a vain power trip, of exercising control over their students, such teachers deserve no place among my exceptional personalities, and they should have no other distinction than their general membership in the herd.

Armies Of One.
Concluding my sectional preamble, this entry with the joking title parodying the well-known catch phrase “Army of One” extends the designation of exceptional personalities from ‘all of the above’ to any member of society who is even occasionally capable of exhibiting originality and independence of thinking.
Free thinking thus becomes my main criterion of exceptionality. No matter how many or few they are (but alas there are fewer of them than is generally recognized), independent thinkers are the gold reserve of any society, and, as such, merit the lofty distinction of being placed alongside the genius and the scholar. (I am intentionally using this unpretentious term in its straightforward sense, to avoid the irrelevant associations raised by the term schoolman.)
Freedom of Thought is by far greater than Freedom of Speech. What can be more silly, useless, and even dangerous than the freedom of ignorant speech? Have most of us ever considered the fact that the freedom of thought is never subject to political repression? There is always brainwashing and indoctrination going on in every society, both by the official agitprop, and by private groups, such as religious authorities, cults, bosses at the workplace, business and product advertisers, peer pressure, and what else not. Yes, plenty of brainwashing, but no repression of thought as such. The whole purpose of agitprop and brainwashing is in finding a substitute for repression in the area of thought where repression carries no power.
But free thought is a natural talent. If someone is brainwashed, it is not an indication of the strength of the oppression but of the weakness of the individual brain. Yes, there are leaders and followers born every day in about the same proportion both in the freest of the free, and in the most repressed nations on the face of the earth. There are also independent thinkers born to every nation, and, paradoxically, but, come to think of it, logically, free thinkers turn out the best and the greatest among the most repressed nations. (More on this, in my entry Freedom Thinkers in the Twilight section.)
There are two kinds of mental aptitude: one that discovers the new in the old (see Nietzsche’s great insight on originality in Vermischte Meinungen und Spruche: "Original: not that one is the first to see something new, but that one sees as new what is old, long familiar, seen and overlooked by everybody, is what distinguishes a truly original mind!"), which characterizes the original mind, and the other one, which seeks the old in the new, and characterizes the regular type. I must add, however, that each of us, no matter how brilliant and original we are, possesses this latter type of pattern-recognition capacity, allowing us to communicate with one another fairly adequately even under extremely adverse conditions, like, say, a bad telephone reception. It is however the original mind’s unique capacity to rise above the social utility of our pattern-recognition apparatus, forgoing those wonderful clear-sky communication skills for the cloudy menace of a gathering storm, where and only where, a sudden blinding flash of lightning accompanied by a thunderous burst of deafening noise, becomes possible, the primordial force, transforming a creature into a creator.