| Chapter 2: | Philosophy, Psychology, and Physiology |
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As Nietzsche would later specify in The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1956, p. 42), “only in so far as the genius in the act of creation merges with this primal architect of the cosmos [i.e., imagination] can he truly know something of the eternal essence of art. For in this condition he resembles the uncanny fairy tale image which is able to see itself by turning its eyes. He is at once subject and object, poet, actor and audience.” This idea is known as epistemological primitivism (see Nahm, 1950). Benedetto Croce (1995, p. 15) attempted to liberate epistemological primitivism from its subjectivist leanings asserting that genius is “humanity itself.” This harkens back to Kant's communicative function of genius and also brings the religious quality of Schopenhauer's art in touch with the Protestant emphasis on community as a prerequisite of faith (see following text on Schleiermacher). L. H. Morgan's unity of life and the mind was nothing other than Kant's and Schopenhauer's genius. L. H. Morgan used the word “genius” in the title of his early paper, On the History and Genius of the Grecian Race, which he contributed in 1841 to his club “The Gordian Knot” (Feeley-Harnik, 1999, p. 231).
Schopenhauer's discussion of genius envelopes his thoughts about madness. The phenomenon of madness captivated the philosopher so powerfully that he turned into a futuristic sociologist, à la Goffman, and personally visited asylums for the mentally disturbed. Quoting Horace to the effect that poetic inspiration can be seen as amabilis insania and citing the examples of Rousseau, Byron, and Alfieri (to which we can now add Hemingway, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, and a host of others) as empirical support of this hypothesis. Schopenhauer proceeds to compare genius and madness from the point of view of his thoughts on relations: