What does it mean to be a creative genius? The following clip is from a 2023 60 Minutes interview with legendary music producer Rick Rubin. In it, Rubin describes his creative process and provides an excellent occasion to discuss the relationship of genius and taste in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of art.
In my Philosophy and the Arts course, we spend a significant amount of time reading Kant’s Critique of Judgment. I show this video on the day we discuss Kant’s theory of artistic genius. At this point, students are familiar with Kant’s account of taste, the ability to recognize and appreciate the aesthetic quality of beautiful art.
In §46, Kant defines genius as “the inborn predisposition of the mind through which nature gives the rule to art” (5:307). Because beautiful art cannot be created according to fixed rules, the artistic genius is a kind of channel for the way beauty appears spontaneously in nature. (My slideshow includes Angelus Silesius’s “Die Rose” on this point: “The rose is without why.”) For Kant, genius has a talent that cannot be learned or taught, and it cannot give an account of itself. Like nature itself, it is creative in a way that is almost chaotic in its freedom.
Taste, by contrast, brings discipline and focus to genius, “clipping its wings and making it well behaved or polished” (5:319). But although Kant ultimately gives priority to taste over genius, his distinction between them is ambiguous. Are these two ideas so easily distinguished?
After showing the Rubin interview, I ask the class: “Is Rick Rubin a genius?” For my students, especially those familiar with Rubin (most of them), the answer is an unambiguous “Yes!” We discuss the way that he describes his creative process, which lines up quite well with the Kantian account of genius. Rubin describes having a “direct connection to the creative force.” Asked to describe what he listens for in a session, the best explanation he can come up with is that he is “listening to a feeling.”
And yet Rubin is a producer. His role is not to make music—he admits he barely knows how—but to contribute his taste to the artistic creations of others. In one exchange, widely memed at the time, interviewer Anderson Cooper is at pains to get Rubin to articulate exactly what his artistic expertise consists in:
Cooper: Do you play instruments?
Rubin: Barely.
Cooper: Do you know how to work a soundboard?
Rubin: No. I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music.
Cooper: [Laughs.] You must know something.
Rubin: Well, I know what I like and what I don’t like. And I’m, I’m decisive about what I like and what I don’t like.
Cooper: So what are you being paid for?
Rubin: The confidence that I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists.
The class discusses the memorable scene in the interview when Rubin describes identifying the iconic guitar riff that became Tom Petty’s “Last Dance with Mary Jane,” a perfect example of taste “clipping the wings” of an artist. In the case study of Rubin, to which should we give priority: do artists far and wide seek him out for his mysterious genius or for his superior taste?
Of course, the answer is neither. My students recognize that Rubin’s genius consists in his taste, that these are two sides of the same coin. This realization becomes the basis for a fruitful internal critique of Kant’s aesthetic concepts and distinctions.
I have found that it is sometimes difficult for undergraduate students to engage with a philosophical text—especially a “classic”—in a nuanced way. They either accept it without question or reject it wholesale. This exercise helps students understand and appreciate the core concepts in Kant’s philosophy of art but also engage with them in a healthy spirit of criticism.
Suggested Readings
Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited and translated by Paul Guyer. Translated by Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Other Resources
The transcript for the interview can be found here.
Editor’s note [GC]: I have found Henry E. Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Taste (Cambridge University Press, 2001) helpful. On the relationship between taste and genius, see chapter 12.
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Jared Highlen
Jared Highlen is an instructor at Boston College, where he received his PhD in 2024. His research focuses on the relationship between political community and the experience of meaning in contemporary Continental philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics. Other interests include philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, ethics, and logic.
