<<Your one word answer (Beethoven) credits individual
accomplishment, in hindsight.>>
He was considered a genius by his contemporaries.
<<That's cool, though clearly there is a strong element
of social acceptance here too, even if that requires long
periods of time.>>
In his case (as in many others), it didn't, but in other
cases, notably Kafka's it was indeed after death --in this
case, death *and* publication of a substantial body of
work.
<<We don't apply the label "genius" to someone whose
similar leaps of intellect are now forgotten, or
uncorroborated.>>
We don't know who invented certain essential and highly
nontrivial things, but if we did, we would probably call the
inventor a genius. It may not have been a single person but a
series of them --this is common. I don't think a single
person invented harmony, or counterpoint. Certainly a single
person did not invent mathematics.
But you are right in that the label is not the thing, and the
label is given by each of us and says something about us, not
about the referent. There is nothing that intrinsically begs
to be called a genius. There is nothing that intrinsically
begs to be called anything. Language is language, easily
abused (by which I mean that the facts are far from the
meaning given to the words).
Best, and I'd better think of something hardboiled to say
before... Ah, Kafka is noir. And El Greco was a noir painter.
And Beethoven's Grosse Fuge is quintessentially
hardboiled.
Best,
MrT
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