Moral Geniuses (Geniusii?)

Columbia University philosopher Elliot Paul observes that at first glance a great moral leader does not appear “creative” in the same sense as a revolutionary artist or a brilliant scientist. The ideas represented by Lincoln or Einstein or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., in their capacity as moral leaders, were not necessarily new.

...Like high-achieving individuals in science or the arts, Paul suggests, moral geniuses are willing to stand against conventional opinion, often within their own nation or community, and seek to overthrow it. That kind of individual courage, we might say, becomes the subject or the text of the moral genius’s greatness. While the specifics vary greatly, we could describe a moral genius as someone who rejects the innate caution and the hypocritical compromises of normative social morality. (King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” his most sustained accomplishment in rhetorical prose, addresses precisely this issue.) 

The Common Genius of Lincoln and Einstein