PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS IN ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

CHAPTER ONE

1.0    Introduction

1.1   Background of Study

1.2   Statement of Problems

1.3   Research Objectives

1.4   Research Question

1.5   Research Hypothesis   

1.6   Scope of Study

1.7   Significance of study

1.8   Limitation of study

1.9   Definition of terms

CHAPTER TWO

2.0   Literature Review

CHAPTER THREE

3.0   Research methodology

3.1   Research Design

3.2   Population of study

3.3   Sampling Design and Procedure

3.4   Data Collection Instrument

3.5   Administration of Data Collection Instrument

3.6   Methods of data analysis

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0   Data Presentation and Analysis

4.1   Data Presentation  

4.2   Test of Hypothesis 

CHAPTER FIVE

5.0   Summary, Conclusion and Recommendation

5.1   Summary

5.2   Conclusion

5.3    Recommendation

References

Questionnaire

CHAPTER ONE

1.0       GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1     INTRODUCTION:

In the evolutionary system, advancement in the human world was as a result of the urge to satisfy the immediate needs of man and even more. Every organism is essentially endowed with its means of livelihood. So, nature has done so well to provide animals with their own means of attack, nutrition, defence and every means of survival.

Hitherto, with further development of the organism in higher animal, a higher means of survival is required. This higher requirement manifests itself in the form of human reason and the intelligence. The reason, then, in a gradual process develops in man as an essential tool to discover and to create new ways of satisfaction, in order to conquer its own world – the human world.

One might not relent to question the value of the human intellect and what it is all about. However, human intellect bestows its subject with the power of reason – ratio or intelligence. And this, therefore, distinguishes   the man, homo sapiens, as that thinking or wise individual from other evolutionary categorization of humans as  in homo erectus

[ standing  man], homo habilis  etc. Also, it plays an important role in every  human make-up.

According to Prof Copleston,  [1963] reason “ has primarily a biological function. If one may so speak, Nature intends it as an instrument for satisfying the needs of a more highly complicated and developed organism than that of animals.”

One would not to a greater extent question the insatiability of the human needs and desires. And could one as well question the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer that man and his world are virtually the Will, the blind desire, and representation. Every satisfaction presupposes a desire, and the latter seeks to attend the former in a logical dialectics. So, then, as man wangles in his eternal and insatiable desires, he immerses himself in it and becomes the Will as Schopenhauer opined.

Consequently, human intellect could be seen as a liberator, a key to human freedom, and emancipation. Schopenhauer [1788] espoused it well that though intellect is by its nature, the servant of the Will, it is capable in man of developing to such an extent that it can achieve its objectivity. That is to say, “that though man’s mind is in the first instance, an instrument for satisfying His bodily needs, it can develop a kind of surplus energy which sets it free at least temporarily, from the service of desire” 

After man might have been liberated, at least temporarily from the service of desire, what would then happen, if I may ask? Schopenhauer answers that, “he becomes a disinterested spectator: he can adopt a contemplative attitude, as in aesthetic contemplation and in philosophy” This aesthetic contemplation according to Schopenhauer is the way of being a genius.

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