Creativity and genius as epistemic virtues: Kant and early post-Kantians on the teachability of epistemic virtue

There is a classical paradox in education that also affects the epistemic virtues: the paradox inherent in the demand to develop general strategies for training persons to be free and creative individuals. This problem becomes particularly salient with respect to the epistemic virtue of creativity, the more so if we consider a radical form of creativity, namely, genius. This paper explores a historical constellation in which rigorous claims about the standards for knowledge and morality were developed, along with a highly influential notion of genius: the philosophy of Kant and of immediate post-Kantian philosophers. The paper shows how in this historical moment came together a new notion of “science,” a theory of “genius” and of virtues, and an analysis of the promises and difficulties inherent in educating a virtuous or creative individual. In this constellation of ideas, there also emerges a potentially fruitful account of how to teach intellectual creativity.     

Groping for the greats: the strange musical claims of Nathan Ausubel

Nathan Ausubel (1898–1986) achieved unprecedented popularity as a compiler and translator of Jewish folklore during the 1940s and 1950s. Beneath the inspiring stories and charming sayings was a leftist ideologue preoccupied with the demise of Jewish life in Europe and the loss of Jewish identity to capitalist forces in the United States. Ausubel's agenda is elucidated in his polemical essays, which advocate using folklore as a means of bolstering Jewish pride and solidarity. Part of his strategy involved exaggerating the influence of Jewish culture on famous non-Jews, including Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. This article examines these dubious musical claims and how they furthered Ausubel's activist agenda.     

Discarding the Barthian Spectacles: Part I, Recent Scholarship on the History of Early 20th Century German Protestant Theology

Abstract :  This essay introduces "the veritable renaissance" of scholarly attention devoted to the theologies of the early twentieth century. This "renaissance" challenges us to discard the "Barthian spectacles" through which we have been reading the theological history of this time and to examine more closely the complex context—social, political, churchly, cultural—in which theology was done.     

Mark Twain's life‐long fascination with phrenology

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain; 1835–1910), American humorist and writer, followed scientific and medical developments, and relished exposing questionable practices and ideas. In his youth, he pondered how phrenologists were assessing character, and in 1855 he copied sections of a phrenology book and a skull diagram into a notebook. Later, in London, he had two phrenological examinations by Lorenzo Fowler—one without and the other after identifying himself. Following his “test,” which produced contrasting results, he began to ridicule phrenologists and phrenology in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and other works. He underwent at least two more head readings in the United States, and in Eddypus, an unfinished work from 1901 to 1902, he maintained that phrenologists base their insights primarily on how people dress and answer questions. Although now lampooning the craniological tenets of phrenology, Twain never seemed to reject the idea of distinct faculties of mind associated with specialized brain organs.     

Kierkegaard's Critique of Eudaimonism: A Reassessment

Interpreters are less univocal than one might think in assessing Søren Kierkegaard's attitude toward eudaimonism. Through an analysis of several key texts from across Kierkegaard's authorship, I argue that existing interpretations do not convincingly address the relationship between Kierkegaard's critique of eudaimonism and his mid‐nineteenth‐century context, which was dominated by post‐Kantian idealists. While I am sympathetic to aspects of deontological and aretaic interpretations, a contextual reading shows that his critique centers on what he diagnoses as the enclosure of the modern self. This puts his critique of eudaimonism in the purview of his moral psychology and in continuity with his critique of romanticism.     

Kierkegaard on Imitation and Ethics: Toward a Secular Project?

This essay demonstrates the prominence of imitation in Kierkegaard’s ethics. I move beyond his idea of authentic existence modeled on Christ and explore the secular dimension of Kierkegaard’s insights about human nature and imitation. I start with presenting imitation as key to understanding the ethical dimension of the relationship between the universal and individual aspects of the human self in Kierkegaard. I then show that Kierkegaard’s moral concepts of “primitivity” and “comparison” are a response to his sociological and psychological observations about imitation from an ethical point of view. In the final section of this paper, I briefly engage Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “ethics of individuality” and Gabriel Tarde’s “laws of imitation” to explore Kierkegaard’s consideration of ethics and imitation as situated within the context of a broader conversation on imitation.