Kant's Conception Of Genius

Have you ever witness someone claiming to in the presence of a genius? Or maybe that they themselves announce that they are one of these rare genius, coming only once every ten thousand years to bless the world with their greatness? Hopefully you have not, though it brings up the question of what can truly be called a genius. Some people define geniuses as an incredible people who has an extensive knowledge on particular subject, usually resulting in its inevitable revolution. Others claims that it’s a fascinating individual who seems to have mastery in every field, with people those who strife to stand beside them in awe. In the modern art world, we typically call those who seems to capture the emotions and seemingly divine creativity into

At first there seems to be an issue about this as it would be impossible to see who truly a genius opposes to a mere imitator. There are many artists out there claiming that they were gifted by a divine birth to share their brilliants with others. However, Kant place an importance on originality. While a genius is gifted with the ability to set the rules of art, they themselves do not have a definite rule to follow. They must use forge their own path with the talent given to them to discover their original works of beauty. The imitator would not be able to achieve this feat as they simply use their “cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule” to create their own art (XLVI). For imitators, Kant states that they only learn about what they can create within the rule of art usually established by a genius. And while learning is a powerful ability to have, in truth these people are just following a paved path without the need of generating an original solution for hardship. This idea of thinking seems to resemble how Socrates depicts rhapsode and their imitative poetry performance in Plato’s Ion. Similar to how Socrates states that a rhapsode are not inspired by the muses, Kant states that imitators could not be geniuses as they do not have ideas entering their minds with no idea of their origin. With the rules of art,

Imagination is a powerful tool for creating art, Kant even called it “a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature” (XLIX). As nature is usually seen as heavenly with illusions to the gods, I quite like the idea that the imagination is on par with a divine plane of existence. When it comes to how imagination would be connected to genius, we must first look that the nature within actual nature. Although the imagination uses material from actually nature for the groundwork of the construction of the second nature, it would not be a carbon copy of it. As a genius is provided the talent but not the rules, their imagination would be free from the limitation of reality and can be used to remodel past experience or even to be built into something that could surpass nature. These representations of the imagination are label as ideas by Kant. Ideas are interesting as they can be seen a reality with the right perceptive. Ideas, with how they are constructed and modify by the imagination, no longer fit the criteria to be consider an experience, but at the same time they do not possess a concept to be seen as a rational idea. While a genius can use their imagination to be free from the constraints of the rules of art, it must not be in constant fluctuation. As a genius creates their art, the imagination’s portrayal of freedom from the rules must be presented as it final form in its representation of