The Religion of Genius Taken Seriously. Edgar Zilsel’s Die Geniereligion (1918) Reviewed as a Critical Philosophical Treatise

In this paper I analyze Edgar Zilsel’s genuinely philosophical critique of the epistemological and ethical claims manifested in the so called “Religion of Genius”. For this purpose, I suggest a rereading of Die Geniereligion (1918) in connection with and in analogy to its philosophical roots and contexts in the historical Enlightenment discourse. I try to point out that Zilsel not only considers the “Religion of Genius” as a rather dubious socio-cultural phenomenon of his time but also as a threat to philosophy itself and to his own logico-empiricist approach, which he earlier developed in the Anwendungsproblem (1916). I demonstrate that going beyond an intentionally destructive critique, Zilsel also uses the concepts of the “Religion of Genius” as a negative foil to present and further elaborate his own logico-empiricist program of rationalization, including his ideal of objectivity and an existential ideal of the “objective craftsmen”.