| Chapter 2: | Philosophy, Psychology, and Physiology |
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genius represents the original, untutored, primitive mind that strives to persevere in the face of a corrupting environment. It started, as we have seen already, with Vico. The English poet, Edward Young (1683–1765), authoritatively wrote in 1756 that “an original may be said to be of a vegetable nature, it rises spontaneously, from the vital root of Genius; it grows, it is not made” (quoted in Zammito, 2002, p. 240). Or as William Duff in An Essay on Original Genius (1767) put it, “By the word original, when applied to genius, we mean that native and radical power which the mind possesses, of discovering something new and uncommon” (quoted in Huber, 2000, pp. 214–215).
Johann W. von Goethe expressed his thoughts on genius in The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) (1774). He subscribed to an idea that genius is opposed to learning. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in The Critique of Judgment (1790) that marked the transition from the era of Enlightenment to the era of Romanticism, tackled the phenomenon of genius, and defined it as an innate productive activity that belongs to nature. “Genius is the innate mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.” Itself a rule-generating activity, genius is free from rules, and hence cannot be mastered by learning. For Kant, genius equaled originality. It starts at birth and terminates at death. It is not subject to imitation. Genius is specific to the fine arts and is contrary to scientific reason. The latter, as a product of learning, imposes constraints on genius as a pure voice of nature. In the fine arts, it is taste that performs the function of scientific reason. However, genius cannot be entirely devoid of reason: It possesses it only to an extent necessary to communicate a subjective excitement to others: