Towards a Culture of Genius – Part II

By David Gosselin

The following essay is part two of a series. Click here for part one.

Having examined Schiller’s notion of Genius in the last article, it became clear that the wisdom of the “masters” described in his poem was not the kind of knowledge born out of the natural insight and creative intuition of the properly cultivated human being, but only the officially sanctioned opinions of the day. These opinions were represented by Kant and the Enlightenment “schools” — which still exert an inordinate amount of influence over the thinking of modern man.

In his second of Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller summed up the predicament of modern culture as follows:

“The course of events has given a direction to the Genius of the Age that threatens to remove it further and further from the art of the ideal… Today, need rules and degraded humanity bows down under its tyrannical yoke. Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers are supposed to be a slave and to which all talents are to pay homage. The spiritual merit of art has no weight in this crude balance, and deprived of all encouragement, it disappears from the noisy market of the century. Even the spirit of philosophical inquiry tears one province after the other from the imagination, and the borders of art narrow, the more science enlarges her boundaries.”

As already observed, in the Kantian system art and science were treated as opposing forces. One affirmed man’s “rational” nature while the other affirmed his “sensual” nature. Consequently, one could essentially only develop at the cost of the other. The historical reaction to this false dichotomy became known as Romanticism. As a philosophical and aesthetic movement, Romanticism prized emotional authenticity, personal conviction and naturalness over the logical, didactic and mechanistic outlook of Enlightenment schools.

Just as France had vacillated between monarchy and anarchy, and finally came full circle with a new emperor, a similar phenomenon would be observed in Germany 200 years later. The sophisticated edifice of German “rationality” came crashing down in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles. The sheer pessimism and despair caused by the injustices of the treaty served as the detonator that blew apart the Enlightenment ideal.

The famous German poet and critic of Romanticism, Heinrich Heine famously anticipated the results 100 year earlier, writing:

“But even more terrible than the others would be the Naturphilosophen, who would actively intervene in a German revolution and would themselves identify with the work of destruction. For if the hand of the Kantian strikes, strong and certain, because his heart is not moved by any traditional reverence; if the Fichtean courageously defies any danger because it does not exist for him in reality; so the Naturphilosoph will enter into terrible association with the original powers of nature. He will be able to conjure up the demonic forces of Old Germanic pantheism, and that lust for battle which we find among the Old Germans will awaken in him, which does not battle to destroy, or to conquer, but solely for the sake of the battle itself. Christianity – and this is its greatest merit – has to some extent tamed that brutal Germanic lust for battle, but could not destroy it; and if ever that restraining talisman, the cross, breaks, the savagery of the old fighters will rattle forth again, the absurd frenzy of the berserker, of which the Nordic poets sing and tell so much.”

On the History and Philosophy of Germany — Heinrich Heine

Once the foundations of modern rationalism were sufficiently rocked, the instinctive drives came rushing back with a vengeance and engulfed the entirety of the German state.

Being well aware of the many Frankenstein monsters that can emerge when the rift between men’s feeling and reason becomes too great, we are forced to go back to the abstract problem pursued by Schiller in his letters.

Science and Art Enslaved

As the sciences became reduced to strictly defined forms of technical knowledge, the provinces of the arts shrank further; and feeling became even more estranged from thought. This deepening divide made possible both the modern commercialization of art and the irrationalism of modern art, with the latter trying to assert itself against the “realism” and practical ends of Enlightenment standards.

So Schiller writes:

“Indeed, nothing is more common than for both science and art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste. Where the character becomes rigid and hardens, we see science strictly guarding its borders and art plodding along in the heavy shackles of rules. Where the character grows tired and lax, science will strive to please, and art strive to entertain. For entire centuries philosophers and artists have been occupied in plunging truth and beauty into the depths of vulgar humanity; the philosophers and artists are submerged there, but truth and beauty struggle triumphantly to the surface with their own indestructible vitality.”

Science suffered from a lack of imagination, since it was divorced from the intuitive and creative drives which make the creation of new hypotheses and the expansion of the science’s borders possible. Art suffered from the utilitarian impulse of the age, or it simply distanced itself from rationality altogether. To the degree art sought to defend its borders from the stultifying spirit of the age, it was by being subversive or asserting the blind forces of passion over reason i.e. Romanticism, and later Modernism and Contemporary Art. New theories were proffered which only further divided man in multifarious ways.

That being said, Schiller reminds us that beauty and truth will always “struggle triumphantly to the surface with their own indestructible vitality.” So, the key becomes understanding exactly how beauty and truth work together, and what they can achieve in their highest perfection.

In his sixth letter, Schiller begins resolving this paradox by comparing the modern age with the outlook embodied by the age of Classical Greece:

“But with a closer examination of the character of the present age, an astonishing contrast will be found between the form of humanity today and the previous, particularly the Greek. The glory of education and refinement, which we justly value, compared to simple nature, cannot be of use to us in comparison to Greek nature, which united itself to all the charms of art and all the dignity of wisdom, without as our own age, becoming their victim. The Greeks put us to shame not only by a simplicity which is alien to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, often indeed our models in the same virtues, with which virtues we are wont to console ourselves about the unnaturalness of our manners. Combining fullness of form and fullness of content at the same time, simultaneously philosophical and creative, tender as well as energetic, we see them combine the youth of fantasy with the manliness of reason in a splendid humanity.”

A multiplicity of ideas could be still grasped with a sublime simplicity. So we have classic aphorisms like Heraclitus’ famous “nothing is constant but constant change” or Plato’s famous paradox of the “One and the Many.” Knowledge of particulars didn’t come at the cost of unity, and unity didn’t come at the cost of individuality. Rather, each one justified the necessary existence of the other.

The Muses still kept watch over all fields of knowledge, from the mystical dance of the stars to the trembling strains of the lyre; from the heroic deeds of bygone ages to the timeless wisdom of the Seven Sages, all of knowledge was still divinely preserved in memory. Divine madness still entailed a seer-like clarity; and everyday life still concealed a divine mystery.

Human Knowledge

Because you glean from it what you yourself have writ in it,
Because you trace in shapes its image for the eye,
And its wide expanses you delimit with lines,
You imagine your mind grasps the eternal world.
The astronomers describe the Heavens with shapes,
So that Infinity may be gazed on by men;
They link faraway suns by the distance of Sirius,
Another in Cygnus and the horns of Taurus,
But fathom they the mystical dance of the spheres
Because Heaven unveils its planiglobium?

A planiglobium was a 17^th century two-hemisphere representation of the celestial globe, projected onto a flat surface (planisphere). Schiller poetically captures the Enlightenment tendency to model and map its knowledge of every phenomena, which it then reduced to a set of formulas and fixed rules —terming that “knowledge.” However, that “human knowledge” usually came at the cost of divine knowledge.

Rather than man’s expansion of knowledge re-enforcing and deepening his sense of mystery and awe before all creation, the narrow empirical models and formulaic approach of Enlightenment thinkers only lead to the further mechanization of knowledge, the worship of formalism and an abolition of mystery.

Deeper knowledge of the causes underlying observed phenomena were relegated to the obscure department of metaphysics; knowledge of the divine was confined to the world of priests, soothsayers and esoteric doctrines.

Of course, the denial of mystery in official knowledge only resulted in the resurgence of esoteric teachings in Europe’s philosophical underground, where secret societies like Free Masonry, Rosicrucianism and related occult schools proliferated at their fastest pace in centuries during the so-called “Enlightenment.” While mystery was chased out of the classroom by the “official” schools, it was promoted in more perverse and esoteric forms in the underground, leading to an ever widening rift between earthly and divine knowledge.

So, how to resolve the deepening fragmentation of society and man’s faculties amid the growing divisions of knowledge in the modern world? Schiller recognized that as high an achievement as the classical world boasted, it had also reached a limit of what was possible under that model. One first had to understand its limitations before drawing any lessons from its time-tested wisdom.

Schiller writes:

“I will gladly admit to you, that as little as individuals can enjoy this dismemberment of their being, the species could not have made progress in any other way. The phenomenon of Greek humanity was indisputably a maximum which could neither continue at that level, nor rise higher–not continue, because the understanding inevitably had to be compelled by the store it already possessed to dissociate itself from feeling and intuition, and to strive for clearness of knowledge; also not surpassed, because only a certain degree of clarity can co-exist with a certain degree of fullness and warmth. The Greeks had reached this degree of development, and if they wanted to progress to a higher degree, they had to surrender, as we, the wholeness of their being and pursue truth on separate paths.”

Schiller observed that while it becomes necessary to focus all of one’s powers into a single point if one is to propel a field of inquiry beyond the limits of intuition alone, a well-tempering of the faculties becomes necessary if the fruits of such progress are to ripen to perfection and serve a thriving society.

Schiller writes:

“Therefore, however much may be gained for the world as a whole by this individual development of human powers, it is undeniable that the individuals who are affected by this suffer by the curse of this universal aim. Indeed, athletic bodies are developed by gymnastic exercises, but beauty is only formed through the free and uniform play of the limbs. In the same way the exertion of individual mental powers can produce extraordinary men, but only their well tempering makes them happy and perfect men.”

So how to benefit from the “sweet wisdom of ages,” without at the same time forsaking the fruits of modern progress? Schiller hearkens back to an ancient myth and an ancient proverb:

“An ancient sage has perceived this truth, and it is concealed in the maxim of many meanings: sapere aude. Dare to be wise. Energetic courage is needed to overcome the obstacles which the inertia of nature and cowardice of heart place in opposition to our enlightenment. It is significant that the ancient myth causes the goddess of wisdom to emerge fully armed from Jupiter’s head; for her very first action is warlike. Even in birth she has to endure a hard struggle with the senses, which do not want to be dragged from their sweet repose.”

Schiller reminds us that a spirit of Genius, which is uniquely preserved by the aesthetic character, must restore man’s creative vision and courage, since:

“Most of humanity is too exhausted and fatigued from the struggle with want, to rally itself to a new and more difficult fight with mistaken opinions. Content if he escapes the hard labor of thought himself, he gladly allows others the guardianship of his ideas, and if higher needs are aroused in him, he seizes the formulas with eager faith which the State and priesthood hold in readiness for this occasion. If these unfortunate people deserve our compassion, our just contempt confronts the others, who are freed from the yoke of need by a better lot, yet bend under this yoke of their own free will. These men prefer the twilight of obscure conceptions, where feeling is more intense, and imagination forms comfortable images at its own pleasure, to the rays of truth which chase away the pleasant delusion of their dreams.”

The victims of cultural degradation are too blinded by their own uncultivated instincts to imagine any better lot. Therefore, “In the lower and more numerous classes, crude, lawless instincts are found which are unleashed by the loosening bonds of civil order, rushing with ungovernable fury to their animal gratification.” However, the problems of the age are exacerbated by those who are in a position to enact change vis-à-vis the culture and man’s development, since they are at the source of cultural corruption.

Schiller writes:

“The civilized classes present to us the still more repulsive spectacle of laziness and depravity of character which is all the more revolting because culture is its source. I forget which ancient or new philosopher made the remark that what is nobler is the more disgusting in its degeneration; but it is equally true in the moral sphere. The son of nature, when he goes to extremes, becomes a raving madman; the pupil of art becomes a good-for-nothing. The intellectual enlightenment, on which the refined ranks of society pride themselves, not completely without justification, reveals on the whole so little an ennobling influence on the disposition, that it rather strengthens corruption through maxims.”

The on-the-ground facts in Schiller’s survey confirm that only a renewed spirit of Genius can restore man’s capacity to feel and think in harmony, and unlock man’s fullest potential in the greatest number of people:

“Any enlightenment of the understanding deserves our respect only in so far that it affects the character in turn; to a certain extent it proceeds from the character, because the way to the head must be opened by the heart. Development of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need of our age, not only because it will be a means of making improved insight effective for practical life, but for the very reason that it awakens this improvement of insight.”

The great irony here is that the development of one’s reason depends on strengthening his capacity for feeling. The heart of the savage or barbarian is incapable of responding to the noblest ideas. In a word: if the savage or barbarian are to ever become open to new laws and ideas, a change first has to take place in the heart.

So the spirit of “Genius” hearkens back to a Golden Age, where the Greek’s powers of reason and his embrace of the sensual world were not yet so fragment and differentiated as to lose the thread of the divine and human that enveloped all categories of knowledge, whether artistic, scientific, political or otherwise.

Schiller writes:

“At that time, in that beautiful awakening of the intellectual powers, the senses and the mind still had no strictly distinct individualities; for no conflict had yet antagonized them to hostilely part from one another, and to define their borders. Poetry had not yet courted wit, and speculation had not yet prostituted itself by sophistry. Both could, if necessary, exchange their functions, because each in its own way honored truth. As high as reason soared, it always drew its matter lovingly after it, and however finely and sharply it made divisions, it never mutilated. Indeed, their reason split up human nature and scattered its magnified elements among the glorious assembly of the gods, not by tearing nature into pieces, but by combining it in various ways, for the whole of humanity was present in every individual God.”

The task of Genius becomes that of reclaiming the divine in both feeling and discernment. And that can only be done by developing in man a fully matured play instinct. Through the “play instinct,” concepts can be enjoyed and explored without having to be immediately marshalled to some practical end; the beauty of Truth can be experienced without the need for laborious mechanical procedures and lifeless formulae to justify its existence. Instead, the practical end and true value of a concept becomes clear as we learn how to play with it; the Truth becomes more enjoyable and practical as we discover how its beauty offers man new degrees of freedom which both the savage and barbarian lack. In a word: through the aesthetic play drive man achieves a perfection which neither reason nor the senses alone can achieve.

That perfection, which seems so elusive in theory, is readily found in the world Fine Art, observes Schiller. There we find countless instances of both imagination and discernment working in perfect harmony, rather than clashing at every turn.

Such art can contain the highest expression of morality without dictating any course of action for audiences; man’s contemplative life can be awakened through the perfectly harmonious wedding of images, music, and dance. Rather than stirring his emotions at the expense of reason, or speaking to his rational nature at the cost of the free interplay of his senses, the aesthetic experience emerges as something that doesn’t elevate one condition by depriving the other, but rather strengthens one by re-enforcing the other, ultimately leading to the magical cancelation of all opposing forces.

The paradoxical nature of how the aesthetic life liberates man is summed up by Schiller in his twenty-first letter, where he writes:

“In the aesthetic condition man is therefore nothing, in so far as attention is given to a particular result, not to the whole capacity, and as long as the absence of any particular determination in him is considered. Hence, one must totally agree with those who explain beauty and the mood into which it transports our mind as absolutely indifferent and sterile in relation to knowledge and mental outlook. They are entirely right; for beauty certainly gives no individual result whatsoever for the understanding or for the will, it fulfills no particular purpose, intellectual or moral; it discovers no particular truth, helps us perform no particular duty and is, in a word, equally incapable of establishing character or of clearing the mind. The personal worth of man, or his dignity, in so far as this can only depend upon himself, remains completely undetermined by aesthetic culture, and nothing further is achieved, than what is rendered possible to him by nature, to make of himself what he chooses – that the freedom is perfectly restored to him, to be what he should be.

“However, precisely by this means something infinite is attained. For, as soon as we recall that this very freedom was taken away from him by the dominating necessity of nature in his sense-perception, and by the exclusive legislation of reason in his thinking, we must regard the capacity which is restored to him in the aesthetic mood as highest of all gifts, as the gift of humanity. Certainly he already possesses this humanity as a capacity, before any determined condition into which he may come; but in actual practice he loses it with every determined condition into which he comes, and it must be restored to him every time anew if he is be able to make a transition into an opposite condition, by means of the aesthetic life.”

Schiller concludes:

“It is therefore not only poetically proper, but also philosophically true, if beauty is named our second creator. For, beauty only makes humanity possible for us, and leaves the rest to our free will, to what extent we wish to make it real. Beauty has this in common with our original creator, nature, which has imparted nothing else to us beyond the capacity for humanity, but allows the exercise of it to our own free will.”

Through ideal art, as rigorously defined by Schiller, Beauty becomes a reminder of the freedom which the actual world denies man. The injustice so characteristic of the world he inhabits, the ugliness which infests the manners and conduct of his peers, the corruption which weighs on the institutions of his country, and the madness which characterizes the philosophy of his age are all annulled aesthetically. In this state, man becomes free to dream, imagine, and feel not what the world dictates, or what his own narrow conceits demand, but to experience a pure moment of unfiltered and divine awareness of his own freedom.

In “On Grace and Dignity,” Schiller draws the comparison between a beautiful life and a beautiful painting:

“But, in a beautiful life, as in a painting by Titian, all of those cutting border lines have vanished, and yet the whole form issues forth the more true, vital, and harmonious. It is thus in a beautiful soul, that sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination harmonize, and grace is its epiphany.”

In conclusion, the Fine Arts becomes both the keeper and preserver of the ideal. They make possible what the savage and barbarian deny, the alternative which the “realist” is unable to imagine, and the timeless wisdom which the starry-eyed idealist is to naïve and importunate to acquire. When man becomes capable of experiencing the ideal proper, he will (as the spirit of Genius reminds us), have “blindly achieved what the rest of men missed in the light, just as children at play succeed where the wisest have failed.”

In this way, those “quieter souls” may finally restore “the sweet wisdom of ages.”

David Gosselin is a poet, researcher, and translator in Montreal, Canada. He is the founding editor of The New Lyre. His personal Substack is Age of Muses, where he publishes historical deep-dives, original poetry and a variety of writings for a new renaissance. His new book A Renaissance or New Middle Ages: Magic, Mystery, and the Trance Formation of the West can be purchased here