Genius, Intelligence and Sainthood

Schopenhauer expounds a theory of 'genius' in the World as Will and Representation. The analysis and critique of varied historical and present meanings of the terms 'genius', 'intelligence' and 'sainthood' in the west is of utmost cultural and philosophical importance. Part of our philosophical project involves the radical deconstruction of these concepts and unmasking their harmful influences and consequent aberrations. 'Sainthood'  is currently employed in a socio-historical sense or related to organized religions, its true universal ethical and spiritual meaning being lost.  'Intelligence' is a vague and fluid pseudo-concept that has wrought immeasurable harm to human culture and society as well as to the human sciences. The term 'genius' is as a rule completely misapplied.

Our theory of intelligence is that true intelligence is founded on two intimately connected principles. That of knowledge of the universal moral law (perceived as such) and that of attaining at least some elements of transcendental philosophical consciousness (TPC) and transcendental philosophical praxis (TPP).

Extraordinary achievements in TPC and TPP are the mark of genius par excellence. 

The genius of true intelligence in the ethical sphere and TPP is called 'sainthood'. 

The special kind of genius, that while intimately connected implicitly to morality, TPP and TPC (as brilliantly expounded by Schopenhauer),  is that of artistic genius which reveals fundamental important aspects about human nature and the world.  

The quality of intelligence is related directly to the importance of its object and domain. 

The extreme opposite of true intelligence is all that involves a kind of cunning, a skill-set whose only purpose and applications lies in achieving personal egotistic wealth and power, everything that involves dominating, exploiting and harming other living beings. There is no 'intelligence' here, no 'genius' and no 'sainthood'. Intelligence is radically incompatible with the will to power or competitive mechanisms of survival (i.e. overpowering others or merely adapting to a contingent environment).

The greatest deception and idol of western society has been attributing 'intelligence' or 'genius' to what amounts to nothing more than gaming, gambling, cunning and calculation. We have to be extremely cautious and insightful about attributing intelligence or genius to work in logic, mathematics, engineering or science,

Genius and intelligence in mathematics is never about the predictable success (theorem proving) in random searches in formal games, computation and conceptual engineering (scientific mass production) but rests solely on the relevance of the work to philosophy (more specifically to TPC) and to the philosophical unification and clarification of science. Thus we have such unsurpassed luminaries as Gauss, Grassmann, Riemann, Frege (who wrote that every true mathematician is half a philosopher), Peirce, Hilbert, Turing, Whitehead, Gödel, Brouwer, Russell, Poincaré, Lawvere, Thom, Martin-Löf, Girard, etc. Their writings are never a mere tortuous game with symbols and ad hoc concepts or non-rigorous obfuscation and plagiarism. The light of TPC implicitly shines through. Their work is also a spiritualization of language.

But scientific discoveries with practical applications to the quality and preservation of human life (or of any living being) are certainly meritorious - for indeed they partake this way in the sainthood, intelligence and genius of ethics.  Science aimed at mechanisms for harm and destruction is the ultimate immorality and stupidity. There is nothing brilliant or intelligent about faulty simplistic models of human society such as 'game theory'.