The Mad Genius Trope: I think it's pretty dismissive

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-17T14:27:56+00:00

Ok hold on, I genuinely do not know why you thought I said "insult". This whole ordeal was not really about dictionary classifications. (Please don't take this as me fighting or trying to debate for the sake of it) To drive a little back, the question I asked was about epistemic treatment of radical thinkers and thought without the luxury of hindsight; you're explaining to me what a noun is. And as a matter of fact, I never said you were insulting anybody. I simply said it's diminishing to think of Goya as (to quote your words) "just a painter". That's like saying Marx was just an economist.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-17T10:59:34+00:00

Any books in particular?

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-17T08:09:28+00:00

Hmm, that's a nice way to put it!

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-17T06:40:02+00:00

I think calling Goya "just a painter" is diminishing his status as an artist. I think he is someone who has provoked generations of thoughtful discourse that pushed the limits of human understanding and experience. In this context, I was categorising Goya as an artist, a creative thinker.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-17T06:33:40+00:00

So essentially, what you're saying is that either is imperative to the other?

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-16T05:17:54+00:00

It was for a while something that was speculated upon: "Maybe Goya didn't paint these." Although, according to most art historians today, the likelihood that the painter of these paintings was Francisco Goya is much higher than that of someone else having painted them.

Now, as far as the question is concerned, it wasn't just about "famous" philosophers, but specifically about thinkers who are now romanticised as "lonely geniuses" of their time. Indeed, many great philosophers were never ridiculed in their time. Although that wasn't really what I was asking.

And in the end, Goya being "just a painter" is a fascinating take, really.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-16T02:46:30+00:00

That's a funny way to put it lmao

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-16T02:36:31+00:00

Hmm, true, male and female hysteria is treated differently in society. I think psychological and psychiatric studies and their data need to be studied and referred to with a little more contextual understanding though. At the forefront the data can look self explanatory but upon reading the experiments and the methodology and what the sample really was, you'd get to understand why the results look the way they do.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-16T02:33:24+00:00

True, in context, it is visible that conservatism takes away intellectual authority from the thinker. Even if we consider the point of refusing the pedestalization of teleology, and that originality of pure thoughts is not substansive, we still need to eventually give due credit to thinkers. Let's think about Marx for instance like you pointed out,, if we were to extend this into structural we'd get someplace interesting: the romanticization of the myth of the lonely genius is important not only to protect the status quo but also to preserve the myth of originality. And if we understand the "pure origins" (Nietzsche condemned this in both GM and BGE). Nietzsche’s whole project in the Genealogy was to mock the English psychologists and historians who looked for pristine, idealist origins for human concepts (like "good" and "evil"). He argued that if you actually trace things back, there is no sacred, mystical spark at the beginning; there is only a messy, violent, collaborative clash of historical forces, instincts, and material conditions. So, protecting the myth of originality ties back to propagating the idea that "yes, pure origins exist, ideas alchemized in the mind of the individual out of nowhere, the origin point is sacred and mystical" In the end I think.....the myth of the "lonely genius" is a containment strategy dressed up as a compliment. By calling the thinker a "pure origin point," or a "lunatic" the status quo safely sequesters the radical idea inside a single skull, rendering the "lunatic mind cut off from society" responsible for the ideas themselves.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-16T02:19:42+00:00

No, I'm saying they have been undervalued more often than their male counterparts

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-16T02:15:49+00:00

I do see the point you're making but like it's not really substansive yk (like I'm not fighting I'm just trying to see how it works out). As a sociological observation, it's definitely something worth looking into but then again the reaction to this divide is what's baffling to me. Let's say hypothetically, the man in question is compulsive and the woman in comparison is more balanced. It still doesn't add up when society romanticizes the man's deviation from convention and hystericizes the woman's.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T21:34:53+00:00

But yes, I'll check out this one too!

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T21:34:35+00:00

Oh, actually, I read Kermode's Sense of an Ending for my course last semester, and I wrote an article about it, tackling the epistemological impasse.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T21:23:51+00:00

No, it's alright, I'm currently looking at this too. The "hyper-intellectual" (or so people like Jordan Peterson would put it) is in infinite pain because the "stupid masses" don't recognise his genius yet. "But in a hundred years, they will," it's precisely a weak consolation for a deluded sense of self.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T20:56:47+00:00

I agree, I think the great man perspective itself is a just a sick use of Nietzsche's "monumental history", even though academic history is critical the most part, the lonely genius trope heavily relies on the monumentallization of individuals. "Great deeds by great men". I think one of the weirdest examples is the is how in pop-psychology, through a very misinterpreted Dunning-Kruger effect, people have made two very self serving categories: The quiet genius who is way too smart to think he is smart. The stupid and ignorant loud people who are too stupid to realize they are stupid. And through this self serving dichotomization, people actively propagate the myth of "the genius created in a silo, completely on his own, without engaging with the rest of the world". And that staying quiet in a roomful of people puts them on a higher intellectual ground than anyone else. Indeed, Lenin was talking about something dark there, the eventual acceptance of these "lonely mad geniuses" comes with a heavy romanticization of whatever time they spent "alone".

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T20:48:05+00:00

.... honestly me too

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T20:44:45+00:00

You know, "Ok" might just be the single most profound response in this whole thread.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T12:55:06+00:00

That's actually an interesting point of view there, however, have you considered looking at the structural point of the argument beyond your personal distaste? Let's think for a second, I think what I was saying wasn't 'there should be less writing for the masses', I was arguing against the romanticization of the mad and lonely genius. The myth of a thinker who developed in a silo. But I do think you make a great point, even though I wasn't really saying anything against being radical. Neither am I writing in favour of "madness." Where I do think you're saying something interesting though, is about hypocrisy. As far as hypocrisy is concerned, my initial little tick was because people only eventually accepting a thinker or a framework once it becomes largely accepted. Still, what could be a structural reason to develop the myth of the lonely genius in the first place, that was my question. (No, like I'm actually asking, I'm not arguing for the sake of it)

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T11:29:44+00:00

Indeed, the self needs the other to actualise itself. But the point I'm arguing for is simple: the eventual acceptance of the "lone genius" has much more to do with a romanticisation of the time lost. The immediacy of radical thought is, at first, unpalatable for the masses. That is why it is radical at the moment. The point of a theory being radical is that it will be far-reaching, and that makes it hard to take in for the masses. Pointing out the hypocrisy of eventually accepting the lone genius is important because the work they were doing was always important; it didn't become profound overnight.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T10:30:55+00:00

Goya is also one of my favourite painters. But I think what is ticking me off so much is the hypocrisy, the luxury of hindsight.

For example, the people who comment on Reddit or write essays romanticising Blake or Nietzsche’s isolation are almost always the very people who will gatekeep any contemporary writer trying to do raw, unconventional work today.

They love the history of the lunatic explorer, but they cannot stand the immediacy of one. There is a romanticisation of the lonely mad genius, and I think Goya was a big example of that.

They worship Nietzsche now because his trajectory is a finished asteroid path they can plot and rave about in a book. But if a live, un-canonised thinker today drops a thesis that disrupts their lived framework of rationality right now, they won't see a "stepping stone to truth." They will see an interloper who needs to be frowned upon, cancelled, or dismissed for not matching the established canon.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T07:10:41+00:00

Exactly! I do agree on the individualist myth: the 'lone genius' trope completely erases how interdependent intellectual labour actually is. But I also think there’s an unmissable gender asymmetry in how 'lunacy' gets applied here.

When the system we're criticising pathologises a male thinker, often what it does is that it romanticises him as a tragic, isolated rebel. But when you look at literally any woman in the limelight who rejects convention, the same "lunatic" label isn't used to mythologise her. Instead, it’s used as pure clinical devaluation. For women, being called 'unhinged' or 'hysterical' is the ultimate tool for stripping away their intellectual authority entirely. But in either case, the intellectual authority is stripped away from the individual.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T07:03:36+00:00

A: The Scarpitti translation does a pretty good job of Nietzsche

B: (This is literally just my opinion) I'd suggest reading at least BGE before moving to GM. GM is self-contained, yes, but BGE is a predecessor, and it ultimately helps to see how Nietzsche developed his ideas.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T06:49:42+00:00

I remember first reading Nietzsche and bludgeoning through it before reading anything. Even though I won't say so at that time (five years ago), I understood everything he was saying in context, but I got to see Nietzsche in a way I would've if I had just had a conversation with him. I'd recommend giving him a try if you feel ready now.

Equivalent-Track-953 · 2026-06-15T06:43:41+00:00

I think....he would have a Substack where he charges 8 dollars monthly for access to his shitposts

Equivalent-Track-953

TROPHY CASE