Biography versus Genius

The bluff has always been that Western philosophy is a life skill and a life choice, unresolved in its ultimate questions and cheerfully echoing with the laughter of the Thracian woman. And this bluff is always called when Western philosophy touches some exposed wire of Science. When it short circuits, sparks, and spasms on the possibility of a final climactic certainty. In these rare moments, history ceases to be the backdrop and setting of human life and becomes instead the active force and mastermind whom it would be futile to resist. In this chapter, we learn to call the dream of this climactic certainty ‘mental intelligence’, and its opposite ‘physical intelligence’.