Intelligence And Originality

Intelligence and originality, as is the case with many other concepts or words, are usually defined in erroneous or incomplete ways.  Intelligence is not a measure of one's educational status, memory accuracy, or communicative abilities; it is simply one's ability to understand and use reason.  Originality is often regarded as nothing other than either the discovery of completely unacknowledged truths or manners of self-expression that have never been displayed by others, but it is broader than this description suggests, as 1) discovering truths that almost no one knows or speaks of and 2) autonomously reasoning logical facts out are also obvious manifestations of originality.

Given the sharp distinction between the two forms of originality, the relationship between intelligence and originality depends on which type of the latter is in question.  Intelligence is an integral part of intellectual autonomy, the second form of originality, and yet that someone possesses intelligence does not necessarily mean that they will identify the many logical facts that no figure of prominence on the historical or contemporary stage has so much as referenced.  There is an enormous difference between the two manifestations of philosophical originality.

Intelligence is inescapably required to exercise intellectual originality in the first sense (except in rare cases where someone might stumble into a newly discovered or little known truth on accident), but someone is not unintelligent merely for having not discovered the "neglected truths" [1] (there are still a few more neglected truths I did not mention in the linked post as well!).  It is the second kind of originality, instead, that intelligence permits all people to exercise, even if they do not go beyond the boundary points of other thinkers, whether those thinkers are competent or incompetent (as the vast majority of historical and contemporary academics/philosophical authors have been).

One of the most unique manifestations of intelligence is certainly the ability to discover the truths that others tend to ignore or remain unaware of--or to discover truths that no one else has formally discovered or acknowledged.  Nevertheless, no one needs to worry about an alleged lack of intelligence on their part if they cannot reason out the most complex or precise truths without having heard of them elsewhere!  Intelligence is one's ability to grasp and wield reason, not one's ability to discover the specific truths that have gone unrecognized or unmentioned throughout human history; originality of the first sense often requires intelligence, but intelligence does not require this form of originality.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-list-of-neglected-truths.html