êthos mystéthikos - Chapter 7 (From the work in progress: The Poetized Critique) By M. Santos

 

7. THE CREATIVE GENIUS (1)

According to the principle of reason, which considers things through relationships, no one is able to grasp a simple idea. However, the whole world would not sustain itself without the Idea of ​​Humanity, even though this is not an authoritarian imposition of any kind, but without that Idea the sensitivity of creative genius would have no ultimate epistemic value and would be overcome by cold technicality.

That is to say, we would be eternally subject to a dull life, where any supremacist artificial intelligence, for example, could take the place of creative geniuses, since it would be able to conceive ideas and carry out compassionate works as well.

At this point, we cannot forget that the minimum 'operational' mystic must be based on the heart-brain-pineal triad (that is, for the mystéthika works of love); for without mysthesis, technocratic authoritarianism would prevail at the expense of human sensitivity and creativity.

It should be noted at this point that we are highlighting three of the important subsystems that make up the human organism, namely: the central nervous system, the endocrine system and the muscular system. Not even the blood system was highlighted, although the muscle in question is the body's master pump.

Now, in a merely cybernetic world, there would not even be a place for this minimal synergistic triad in operation, but rather a tedious repetition of the same theme, that is, brain times, brain times brain, etc.

However, the works of love are infinitely more creative and do not generate boredom or any unnecessary suffering.

The metaphysics of the beautiful has already observed that, due to the finesse of the ingenious way of knowing, the representation becomes pure and crystalline, in no way clouded by desire. From this derives the precision and objectivity of the genius capacity, which makes possible, in the physical world, some access to the thing itself, the true foundation of the works of creative geniuses in all areas of human expression, but especially in the world of art. .

Even because, although inserted in time, a genius work will always remain timeless and will serve everyone, being the property of no one in particular, and this, regarding the idea that such work makes possible indistinctly to humanity, because it has no relationship - in itself and on the part of the authentic creative genius as well - with the ego interests of most humans.

From what we have seen so far, philosophy can be understood as a type of art as well, but since the subjectivation of genius has the consequence, on the individual of genius, of melancholy and the bipolarity of humor, then, there is a great distance between rationality properly speaking, secure self-control, the closed overview, full of security and regularity of behavior, which are found in an ordinary rational human being, and the state of dream absorption, sometimes of nervous excitement, of the genius human being . Therefore, it is obvious that a professor philosopher would hardly be naturally inclined to carry out compassionate works. In this sense, mysthesis will hardly serve as an academic discipline either.

We also emphasize that: this melancholy of the creative genius prevails many times, because the adverse and the inconvenient overcome the favorable and the desired.

One lively performance soon stifles another, and the change in mood is surprisingly rapid; one jumps from one extreme to the other; in a phenomenon that approaches madness, as Goethe describes it in Tasso and as, at all times, it has been perceived in the individual of genius.

As we already know so far, for an ordinary human being, the desire to know is the first and decisive impediment to the objectivity of the knowledge of the Idea, because anyone who desires will be able to know nothing about the Idea of ​​Humanity.

In this way, and as we have already observed, subjectivity is like a mist, it is the Veil of Maya, as the Vedic wisdom would say. And, that 'wall' of subjective understanding makes immediate knowledge impossible, so there is no appeal to subjectivity in mysthesis, as in all authentic art. Rather, there is only one idea in the pure subject of knowing, understood as a measure of the genius faculty of knowledge, which greatly exceeds that required for the service of the common human will. Therefore, all art and genius creation find no impediment in accessing the Idea.

The aesthetic faculty is, therefore, the special faculty of rapture of actual reality.

The subjective mode, on the other hand, is the one incapable of reaching some idea, which, as an object of intuition, which is not located in the realm of effectiveness, does not awaken Negativity in life, but rather makes it silence completely, in the face of a compassionate attitude and more elementary.

This intuitive faculty, being a natural ability, is always within the reach of each one, existing in a latent state in the human spirit, regardless of religious beliefs and a greater or lesser degree of education.

For practitioners of daily meditation, whether yogis or not, intuiting the beauty of inner peace is almost routine. However, it is not necessary to be a fakir or the like, to access the intuitive 'paradise', through the third part of the elemental bodily triad of mystéthika, the Cosmic Eye of mysticism, the pineal gland, the Ajna, or control center, in Sanskrit, the sixth chakra, which is represented by a two-petalled lotus, resembling a winged circle. It's better known as the third eye, and it's physically attached to the pineal gland, located between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

In aesthetic intuition, an objective image is torn from the course of actuality and assumes, at the same moment, the power to put an end to all want and suffering.

As we have seen, the work of genius is like that, too. In this way, such cessation will occur in us too, whenever the Beautiful and the sublime move us, because tranquility is necessary for the aesthetic state of elevation and expansion of consciousness, a state of serenity of the spirit.

On the contrary, that inner peace is contrasted with the suffering, torment and anguish, which feed on want and unbridled thinking, in the tedious daily life, and before which, in order to redeem itself in the world, the genius becomes indifferent. to all that Negativity in life, through selfishness, imposes on everyone.

Thus, subjective knowledge distresses geniuses, while immediate knowledge frees them in the aesthetic nature that causes the birth of creative works, since the suspension of the individual's subjectivism.

It is at this moment that the human being empties himself of wanting, to become one with the idea of ​​beauty in focus here, that is, with that which contains knowledge devoid of any volitional imposition, ideal and more objective knowledge, the immediate. of the thing itself.

Therefore, having eyes that reveal the essence of things and that pierce the actual reality of phenomena, the creative genius makes his technique prevail, then the work also endures, as if it were a loan from his eyes and his privileged gaze. to others.

It is through this aesthetic intuition that the genius exhausts a phenomenon and conceives an idea, no longer taking into account the principle of reason.

And so the essence of effectiveness lies in the work of art, and it is the same eyes with which the genius sees the suffering of the world. He sees the essence of things in this world, regardless of any relationships, he soon breaks free.

This is his natural and innate gift, and from that his art technique also results, as something private and non-transferable.

Although everyone has to a greater or lesser degree this ability of the aesthetic gaze, only the creative genius has it, in order to capture the Beauty without mediation and, with that, provide the facilitation, through the medium of the work of art, to those who they appreciate, giving them the satisfaction of access to immediate knowledge expressed primarily in natural Beauty.

So far we can accept that the genius work has the ability to present an idea to the common sense consciousness, and that this is the most objective way, therefore, it is superior to the logical-rational way, in the sense of going straight to the primordial epistemic object. , namely, the idea of ​​the phenomenon.

Note here that: mystéthika would be merely a poor poetic delusion, if one could empirically affirm that there is something in the world, something like the phenomenon of the idea. However, in mystesis, the Idea of ​​Humanity is the content and container of the phenomena of actuality, and this at the same time.

Therefore, the genius knowledge provides the detachment of all causality, imprinting a purely objective disposition in the work, a free 'image' and not conforming to what happens in the world of Negativity in life.

Released from any relationship with the effective and elusive torrent of the course of the world, such a loving work is able to detach the spectator from this domain of Negativity in life, awakening him to the disinterested contemplation of the idea exposed in it, which has no relation to it. with the phenomenal world, because, in the arts, only the authentic genius can accomplish anything good, holding before us a limpid mirror, through which we see gathered together in the most crystalline light all that is essential and significant, purified of all causalities and oddities.

Note, however, that the dialectical-dialogical-epistemic procedure is a key notion at this point.

Fantasy has been recognized as an essential component of genius, with good reason; but it has sometimes been thought that fantasy and genius were one and the same, which is a great mistake, for the highest degree of genius is what is exposed in the art that reveals the idea. And, precisely because it possesses a surplus of that immediate faculty of knowing, the genius apprehends the thing in itself in actuality.

In this way, let us also note that the human being of genius is like a daimonion, that is, he is gifted with an aesthetic disposition focused on the qualitative and essential aspect of the world. Therefore, it has nothing in common with the later notion of genius, which has become conventional since modernity, and which has been culturally established as a quantitative coefficient of intelligence.

In this sense, genius is an unusual energetic phenomenon of the will, an 'irrational' phenomenon that resembles madness, and aesthetic intuition occurs in it as a moment of freedom from the suffering caused by the phenomenal approach to the world. Therefore, their occupation, their way of acting and their goals in the world are quite unusual, as they communicate something of the Idea of ​​Humanity, or rather, make it communicable through the works of love.

While the entire essence of the world becomes expressible only through philosophy, art, plastic as well as poetry and music, as well, are the realm of activity and the stuffing of the works of genius.

In the so-called genius state, like what also occurs in the meditative state, the principle of individuation is overcome and, in this sense, there is no exaggeration in understanding that the wise person is ethically brilliant and that the genius is aesthetically wise. 

Genius and wisdom must, therefore, be understood as that same natural disposition, which in some human beings manifests itself in an excessive way, that is, as a disposition exceeding what happens to others, and which, in a supreme degree, both in aesthetics and in ethics is a kind of 'aberration' of nature, given its scarcity and rarity in the world.

It is true that the term genius, in some senses of the classical Greek sense, was called daimonion ti, a type of divine madness. 

Even Socrates said he was “tormented” by an “inner divine voice”, to which he listened not so much to indicate what to think and how to act, but mainly to dissuade himself from Negativity in life.

The gods were the expression of the divine principle in the ancient Greek world. This divine principle was what could bring men the supreme good, which is virtue. 

Therefore, Socrates was, at least partially, within the archaic religious tradition when he spoke of his (daimonion) 'something divine', which advises him to avoid certain actions, as stated in Apology 31 d; and his operation is considerably more vast in Xenophon's account, in his Memorial. I, 1, 4, a work composed of seven manuscripts.

Also notable is Socrates' constant use of the impersonal form of the word and the synonym 'divine sign', in Phaedrus 242 b. There are still other uses of the term in the Greek world, as in Timaeus 90 a, where Plato himself identifies it with the soul.

In Platonism we can see a further reflection of this, for example, in Meditations II, 17, III, 16, a work of Stoic philosophy by Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, the Philosopher Emperor. 121 to 180 a. D. 

Finally, in another notion, the term daimonion refers to an intermediate figure between the Olympians and mortals and is also present in Plato, in Demonic Eros in Symp., 202d - 203a.

As we have seen, it became clear that the aesthetic faculty is the special faculty of rapture of empirical reality, and that the gift of genius is the energetic power of knowledge beyond the ordinary norm, something that is innate to it.

This can be seen in the originality of an art technique, for example, not only in the works, but also in the case of Vincent van Gogh and Michelangelo, for example. 

But the human conscience, therefore the whole world, will never be released except in the Idea of ​​Humanity, and it is correct to also call it the Conscience of Humanity.

However, we must warn that, in mystéthika, ordinary human consciousness is seen as the mere tip of the “iceberg” of the unconscious.

We already know that all empirical knowledge springs from subjectivity, while all ingenious work points precisely to the non-necessity and non-exclusivity of this limited way of knowing the world. 

Therefore, this subjectivist attitude makes us remain limited, accommodated and conformed to the world of suffering, which is fostered, above all, by the desire to know. This is because all knowledge that springs from the will will remain rooted in phenomena, that is, wanting to know is what makes effective and immediate knowledge of the real impossible.

In other words, wanting to know is what separates us from that noumenal knowledge of the Pythagoreans, something that, if it were surpassed, then we would have already given up using the Pythagorean theorem, and we would not even use such nomenclature to refer to something in contemporary mathematics. 

That is why, when noticing this inversion prevailing in the world, about access and the way to access the most essential knowledge, every human being of genius is moved and experiences drama, restlessness and irritability in the tedious daily life of ordinary tasks.

Finally, we could not end this section without considering the grandiose problem that is imposed, by virtue of a theory of genius, namely, that of the relationship and approximation of madness to genius.

All these faults, to which the genius individuality is subject, have long ago given rise to the observation that genius and madness have a common boundary, genius, in part, passes over to madness, at least it is easily had in society (vergesellschaftet) as carrying a hint of madness. 

Even fictional enthusiasm has named itself a kind of madness, which Horace (Od. Lib. III, 4) names amabilis insania. Wieland wrote in the introduction to Oberon: 'A sweet madness plays on my forehead' and Seneca (in de Tranq. Animi 16.16) points to what Aristotle said: 'there never was a superior spirit without a mixture of madness'. 

Already in Cicero Tusculan. 1, 3.3. Aristotle said that all men of ingenuity are melancholy. Plato speaks in several passages of the kinship between madness and genius: in Phaedrus, 245a, he goes so far as to say that without a certain madness there can be no authentic poet; yea, the same says in 249c-249e, in asserting that he who knows eternal ideas in ephemeral things appears to be mad. He expresses precisely this, in the aforementioned Myth of the Cave (in Rep. 7): he says that those who have intuited outside the cave the true light of the sun and the things that really are (the Ideas), when they return to the cave, they can no longer see ; for their eyes have become unaccustomed to the darkness, as if blinded by the strong light, and can no longer, down there, recognize the shadows projected on the wall, making all sorts of mistakes and becoming the object of derision of others who never left the cave and who know only the shadows.

Therefore, as can be seen, the boundary between mental insanity and genius is very tenuous, to the point of being confused as one and the same thing, especially in the frivolous opinion of common sense.

However, and still for an effective differentiation between the genius and the madman, we emphasize that the essence of madness is determined by a serious disturbance of memory, which makes unfeasible the well-connected memories of events that have occurred. Therefore, the activity of such an individual on a day-to-day basis also becomes without guidance and without fluidity, especially with regard to the natural service of the genius, that is, in making his life and works expressions of the Idea of ​​Humanity, as a gift to the other members of the species, or rather, as the works of love.

Ending this section, we conclude with the understanding that, through aesthetic intuition, it is possible to overcome the veiled and limited way of knowing the world, and, then, reach the Immediate Ideal knowledge. 

Now, at no time do we hide the fact that the metaphysics of the beautiful served as a starting point for the elaboration of the decisive neologism here, namely, mysthesis.