m giving beauty to this unpleasant scene, thisdepiction of John the Baptist's severed head being presented on a plateis utterly gruesome and displeasing, and yet it is undoubtedly a work offine art. Another questionable part of Kant's analysis is in his distinctionbetween the work of a genius and the school that follows that workthrough imitation but without aping. If the pupil is not a genius, thenthey will not bring an originality to the work, and so I cannot see howtheir work will have any great worth. That is to say, I cannot see therelevance of the distinction that Kant makes between imitation andaping. He also does not make clear whether the work of such schoolswould be classified as fine art. Surely the art of imitation though atalent, is simply mechanical and learnable and therefore not to beconsidered fine art. My final point concerns how we actually use the term 'genius'. While it may be that we are doing so incorrectly, we do talk of scientistsas geniuses. We even use the term 'intellectual genius' in doing so, aphrase that on Kant's account would be seen as contradictory. To givea recent example, the work of Stephen Hawking is described as that ofa genius. In conclusion, while Kant's conception of genius is very wellstructured and argued, and while I do fully accept his explanation of thefaculties of the mind that constitute genius, and his distinction betweenthe genius of the artist and the method of the scientist, I find many ofhis other suggestions either unconvincing, or based on dubiousgrounds....
