EXPRESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM, THE CULT OF THE ARTIST AS GENIUS, AND MILTON’S LUCIFER
EXPRESSIVE INDIVIDUALISM, THE CULT OF THE ARTIST AS GENIUS, AND MILTON’S LUCIFER

Summary/Abstract: I propose an ‘intellectual genealogy’ of the widespread contemporary lifestyle called ‘expressive individualism’, tracing it back first to the cult of the artist as genius which flourished during the 19th century, but which has been democratized and universalized in our time. I then trace it one step further, somewhat surprisingly, to the altered depiction of Lucifer John Milton gives in his poem Paradise Lost. Milton’s Lucifer rejects not only Jesus as the highest creature, he rejects the Father as father; he announces ‘I know none before me; I am self-begot.’ To the extent that we embrace the ethic of ‘expressive individualism’, therefore, we are implicitly committed to Milton’s Lucifer as an archetype of human fulfilment, which I suggest, however, is toxic.

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