To propose a talk about the idea of genius may seem not only foolhardy, but old-fashioned, given that the study of the history of ideas has long been dismissed as an antiquated, even reactionary, undertaking. Recently, however, the discipline has been making a quiet comeback, with a diverse array of scholars now writing, effectively, what Arthur Lovejoy once described as the “life histories” or “total life histories” of particular ideas.
This talk will address this phenomenon and argue that it needn’t be greeted as a return to a methodological dark night. On the contrary, I will aim to suggest by providing a brief sketch of the “construction” of the history of ideas in the work of a number of thinkers influential in the post-war American academy, that however necessary at the time, and however fruitful since, the pointed critiques leveled at the discipline beginning in the 1960s have caused historians to lose sight of what was most compelling about the history of ideas at its best—its scope, its sweep, its interdisciplinary appeal, its transnational, and transtemporal range. Recalling some of those strengths, and suggesting how they might be put to use in a revivified history of ideas (or, as David Armitage has described it, a history in ideas) that is relevant for the 21st century and mindful of its past shortcomings, will be the aim of this talk, which will seek to illustrate its general propositions with reference to the scholarly project I have been working on for the last several years, and am slowly now bringing to completion: a history of the idea of genius in the thought and culture of the “West” from antiquity to the 20th century. It is project that may well be foolhardy, but at least, I hope, very much of the moment.
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