Robert Peters at [log in to unmask] wrote:

>Can't we stop saying e.g.  Beethoven was a genius but start saying: he
>was a human being with faults and weaknesses but with an astonishingly
>craft and gift in writing music that can still move and electrify? Isn't
>that enough?

No because this leaves us with no difference between Beethoven and John
Williams, and clearly there is a difference.

The problem with attempts to define genius by anything other than genius is
that they invariably center around some quality people are told to admire,
but generally are not allowed to have.  Being a rebel, a different thinker,
is something that is preached to us from billboards that sell trucks and
computers and SUVs.  But in reality the nail that stands up is hit the
hardest.

The problem with trying to deny genius is that a theory of human thought
without the concetp fails to explain an intrinsic quality which occurs in
the thought process of many people - one which reaches beyond craft -
though craft is important - and beyond mere effect.

The one way out is an old one - to stop saying that people "are" geniuses
and instead say that they "have" a genius.

Stirling Newberry
http://www.mp3.com/ssn
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