Philosophy expert shares Aristotle's simple way to know if you have a 'great mind'

One of the strangest things about highly intelligent people is that they are very aware of what they don’t know. The psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that the more intelligent someone is, the more they fixate on their perceived gaps in intelligence, leading them to underestimate themselves. Conversely, those who aren’t very intelligent overestimate their knowledge on a subject.

The great mind might be more preoccupied with the gaps in its knowledge than the smaller mind that thinks it knows everything. How can someone see if they have a great mind? Philosophy expert Julian de Medeiros says it all goes back to Aristotle's “rule of thumb.” De Medeiros writes a Substack on philosophy and has over 1.4 million followers on TikTok, where he analyzes the mysteries of love, intelligence, and friendship.

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“Here's a simple sign that you are intelligent, that you have a great mind, and it's a simple theory, a rule of thumb, that goes back to an observation by the philosopher Aristotle, who once wrote: ‘No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness,’” de Medeiros says. “By which he meant that there's a fine line indeed between being a genius and being a madman.”

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“As the philosopher Schopenhauer once wrote: ‘Talent is when you can hit a target no one else can hit. Genius is when you can hit a target no one else can see,” de Medeiros continued. “Now to have a great mind, therefore, means that you can see and think things that other people can't. But this puts you on a kind of border where there's a liminal line between what is real and what is not. Your mind is a double-edged sword, both a blessing and a curse, and that very intelligent people can also fall off the edge into the abyss.”

Aristotle lived more than 2,300 years ago, when our knowledge of mental and physical health was a fraction of what we know now. But, interestingly, he was correct in believing that highly intelligent people may face greater psychological struggles than those of normal intelligence.

A study published by Mensa foundthat knowledgeable people are are 20% more likely to have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. They are 80% ore liekly to be diagnosed with ADHD and 182% more likely to have a mood disorder.

Why is it that highly intelligent people are more likely to suffer from mental disorders? A study found that it may be caused by psychological excitability. Highly intelligent people are known to fixate on things. This can be a big help when you are problem-solving at work, but it can become a problem when you become preoccupied with a comment from your boss or a social interaction that you can't stop playing over and over in your head.

There is a funny way that life always seems to balance things out. You can either be unintelligent and think you know everything, or be brilliant and focused on everything you don’t know. It shows that, with respect to intelligence, having a psychological understanding of yourself is one of the keys to living a healthy and happy life. Or, as Aristotle once put it: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”