Everybody who knows the educated meaning of “genius,” must agree that “yesterday,” the good old days, is replete with geniuses. Many, however, would beg to differentiate between “yesterday proper” (which ended somewhere before the onslaught of the twentieth century had begun) and the “so-called yesterday,” which is viewed by them as part of “today,” and therefore ineligible for membership in the yesterday club.
There is a great temptation to argue that ever since the decline of caste aristocracy with the introduction and social acceptance of materialism and capitalism, putting the emphasis on money and material values, genius has been degenerating along with society. This may appear like a fairly reasonable point, until we remember that societies have been degenerating ever since times immemorial, whereas genius never goes “along with society,” but stands outside it, or in opposition to it. Capitalism--so what?! Does genius condone slavery and serfdom of our aristocratic past, or does it pine for the good old stone age which is no longer with us?
There is an even more radical school of thought which nostalgizes for the classical times before the Romans had conquered the world: Plato, Aristotle: those were the days! Who do you really know after Aristotle who can measure up? Renaissance, ages and ages later, was just a return to Classical Greece!
These rather disingenuous champions of ancient classicism must have run short on Nietzsche, who beats them all with his delightfully irreverent take on the beloved Greeks. Plato and Aristotle? Hybrid types! The Pre-Socratics-- those were the real thing!
“Any nation is put to shame when one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates. All those men are integral, entire, and self-contained, and hewn out of one stone. Something quite new begins with Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers since Plato lack something essential…”
Well, Nietzsche does not really mean that after Socrates the nature of genius has deteriorated beyond repair. We may explain his grievance toward all post-Socratics by the fact that starting with Plato, philosophy, arts and sciences had become organized and professionalized, and the quasi-amateurish charm of the old guard had kind of died out with them. But nobody, even Nietzsche, was going to argue that the coin of the genius realm had lost its luster ever since.
As for the geniuses of today, there are admittedly too few of them. One may start naming names in science, but let us not confuse the weird uniqueness of genius with brilliant scholarship. Einstein’s 1905 formula was a lightning strike of pure genius; show me comparable strikes and we may then identify some other geniuses of science.
There is one incontestable genius in literature today, and she is J. K. Rowling. There is nobody else besides her. As for the other arts, alas, I cannot name a single name, under which I can inscribe ecce genius. As for politics and statesmanship, the world of today is in such dire straits that I can’t even confer the genius status on Vladimir Putin, who obviously stands out as an extraordinary man among the world elite…
Which brings us to the genius of tomorrow. I am sure that once in a while they will be coming from the gray shadows of general mediocrity, unpredictably! (Who could ever predict the coming of Rowling?!) As for an emergence of genius in world politics, Putin still has his chance. Of all the world politicians on the stage in the new millennium, he alone has shown the potential of being one. As I said before, it is not clear yet, but we shall see…
And finally, about America. I do not think that today America is a genius-friendly country, and especially in post-Nixonian politics (JFK and Richard Nixon were, perhaps, America’s last bona fide political geniuses, one assassinated physically, the other destroyed by the tiny, but artificially overblown pest of the Watergate scandal), where her by now habitual suppression of exceptional individual talent is demonstrable and... disinspiring.
There is a great temptation to argue that ever since the decline of caste aristocracy with the introduction and social acceptance of materialism and capitalism, putting the emphasis on money and material values, genius has been degenerating along with society. This may appear like a fairly reasonable point, until we remember that societies have been degenerating ever since times immemorial, whereas genius never goes “along with society,” but stands outside it, or in opposition to it. Capitalism--so what?! Does genius condone slavery and serfdom of our aristocratic past, or does it pine for the good old stone age which is no longer with us?
There is an even more radical school of thought which nostalgizes for the classical times before the Romans had conquered the world: Plato, Aristotle: those were the days! Who do you really know after Aristotle who can measure up? Renaissance, ages and ages later, was just a return to Classical Greece!
These rather disingenuous champions of ancient classicism must have run short on Nietzsche, who beats them all with his delightfully irreverent take on the beloved Greeks. Plato and Aristotle? Hybrid types! The Pre-Socratics-- those were the real thing!
“Any nation is put to shame when one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates. All those men are integral, entire, and self-contained, and hewn out of one stone. Something quite new begins with Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers since Plato lack something essential…”
Well, Nietzsche does not really mean that after Socrates the nature of genius has deteriorated beyond repair. We may explain his grievance toward all post-Socratics by the fact that starting with Plato, philosophy, arts and sciences had become organized and professionalized, and the quasi-amateurish charm of the old guard had kind of died out with them. But nobody, even Nietzsche, was going to argue that the coin of the genius realm had lost its luster ever since.
As for the geniuses of today, there are admittedly too few of them. One may start naming names in science, but let us not confuse the weird uniqueness of genius with brilliant scholarship. Einstein’s 1905 formula was a lightning strike of pure genius; show me comparable strikes and we may then identify some other geniuses of science.
There is one incontestable genius in literature today, and she is J. K. Rowling. There is nobody else besides her. As for the other arts, alas, I cannot name a single name, under which I can inscribe ecce genius. As for politics and statesmanship, the world of today is in such dire straits that I can’t even confer the genius status on Vladimir Putin, who obviously stands out as an extraordinary man among the world elite…
Which brings us to the genius of tomorrow. I am sure that once in a while they will be coming from the gray shadows of general mediocrity, unpredictably! (Who could ever predict the coming of Rowling?!) As for an emergence of genius in world politics, Putin still has his chance. Of all the world politicians on the stage in the new millennium, he alone has shown the potential of being one. As I said before, it is not clear yet, but we shall see…
And finally, about America. I do not think that today America is a genius-friendly country, and especially in post-Nixonian politics (JFK and Richard Nixon were, perhaps, America’s last bona fide political geniuses, one assassinated physically, the other destroyed by the tiny, but artificially overblown pest of the Watergate scandal), where her by now habitual suppression of exceptional individual talent is demonstrable and... disinspiring.
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