Kant és a (nem-művészi) zsenialitás

This paper investigates Kant’s concept of genius in the context of scientific (more precisely, mathematical) knowledge acquisition, arguing that in the (pre-critical) Kantian approach, the difference between artistic and scientific excellence is much weaker than even (the post-critical) Kant often seems to suggest. Connections between artistic and scientific activities can be established by focusing on post-critical metaphilosophy instead of philosophy of art, explaining their relationship with respect to the synthetic a priori nature of both creation processes. The paper builds on a historically informed rational reconstruction of Kant’s thought about scientific genius, building on Kant’s insights but also taking further steps that Kant may not necessarily accept. The reason is that Kant is rather unclear about the issue, and hence, the questions posed here are whether Kant could have thought what is implied by the present line of thought on the one hand and whether it would have been reasonable for him to think so on the other. Even though the answer to the first question seems to be ‘no’, I shall argue that the second can be answered by ‘yes’: Kant’s post-critical philosophy would have been more coherent if he had accepted the possibility of scientific, and also philosophical, genius.