Genius. With hints of madness and mystery, moral license and visionary force, the word suggests an almost otherworldly power: the power to create, to divine the secrets of the universe, even to destroy. Yet the notion of genius has been diluted in recent times. Today, rock stars, football coaches, and entrepreneurs are labeled ‘geniuses,’ and the word is applied so widely that it has obscured the sense of special election and superhuman authority that long accompanied it.
[...]... the emperor ordered the construction of sanctuaries containing a sacrificial altar and images—usually statues of his genius and familial Lares A regular cult was maintained there by magistrates of the administrative districts of Rome, and a yearly festival, the Compitalia, was held involving sacrifice, feasting, and games The carefully crafted message was clear: as crossroads marked the boundaries of. .. All men had a genius But no man’s genius was the same as any other’s And just as the genius of Socrates was conceived as a special being a reflection of his own uncommon nature and self—the genii of the greatest Romans were imagined as extraordinary and unique One, in particular, that of Brutus’s adversary at Philippi, came to dominate all others, seeking to subsume the genius populi, the genius of. .. within—the nature of the god that shapes us And as every man has a different genius, a different guardian and companion, so, too, does each man have a different personality, a different nature and fate The two notions, genius and ingenium, tended to merge And so a line of inquiry that had preoccupied the Greeks—what makes the nature of men, and, more specifically, what makes the nature of great men—also exercised... be a simple truth At the very least, an outstanding man must be that a man—born free and with a soul amenable to the kind of training that could make for true greatness and virtue.29 Yet notwithstanding these basic differences of temperament and outlook, Aristotle left behind a theory that could accommodate elements of his master’s teachings: the possessor of natural talent might still be conceived as... Timaeus, where he repeats an assertion made elsewhere that every man has a daimon, an attendant guardian, linking him to the divine Rather than describe this daimon as a separate being, as he does on other occasions, however, Plato equates it directly with the rational part of one’s soul, whose seat, he says, is in the head It is that part of us —human reason (logos or nous)—that is most heavenly and... territories, and the Lares and genius were the keepers of family and space, the cult of the compita united the whole of Rome with the household of Augustus His private genius was the genius of all.48 The man sired by a snake thus laid claim to a god far more expansive, and far more powerful, than that of any other man Fittingly, it was nourished, like the Genius populi Romani, by a victim of flesh —in this case,... gods of Mount Olympus themselves Homer’s rough contemporary, the poet Hesiod, was more specific, claiming that the daimones were originally heroes of the Golden Age, transformed by Zeus when their race died out into guardians and “watchers of mortal men.” And the followers of the sixth-century philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras maintained that they could see and hear daimones as a consequence of. .. women first experienced the drama of disenchantment in a significant way, a development without precedent in the whole of human history And it was in Europe and the Americas that the doctrine of equality first gained significant traction But what about method and scope? Why, that is, undertake a history of genius, as this book does, as a history in ideas spanning the course of several thousand years?... than of who he was and who he aimed to be In this respect Alexander differed from earlier divine rulers, the Chinese emperors or Egyptian pharaohs, who also claimed to rule as gods on earth, but who did so on the basis of what had come before or what had always been Vast pyramids and terracotta armies, still standing, recall their names But Alexander’s renown was different; he made it largely for himself... human nature, mortal throughout each man’s life, variable in features, bright and gloomy The genius, an individual’s intimate “companion” (comes) and spiritual double, is aware of, and responsible for, the differences that shape human personalities and determine their fates And fate is written in the stars That, at any rate, was the assertion of ancient astrologers, whose influence on popular Roman religious . Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos DIVINE FURY DIVINE FURY A HISTORY of GENIUS DARRIN M. MCMAHON BASIC BOOKS A Member of the Perseus Books Group New York Copyright © 2013 by Darrin M. McMahon Published by Basic. Katha sarit ságara, or Ocean of the Streams of Story, the god Shiva’s lover Parvati begs him to tell her a tale that has never been heard before and that will never be heard again. Shiva was a. that men and women first experienced the drama of disenchantment in a significant way, a development without precedent in the whole of human history. And it was in Europe and the Americas that