Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-12T05:00:29.839Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Creativity, Virtue and the Challenges from Natural Talent, Ill-Being and Immorality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2014

Matthew Kieran
Matthew Kieran*
Affiliation:
University of Leedsm.l.kieran@leeds.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

We praise and admire creative people in virtually every domain from the worlds of art, fashion and design to the fields of engineering and scientific endeavour. Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Einstein was a creative scientist and Jonathan Ive is admired the world over as a great designer. We also sometimes blame, condemn or withhold praise from those who fail creatively; hence we might say that someone's work or ideas tend to be rather derivative and uninspired. Institutions and governmental advisory bodies sometimes aspire, claim or exhort us to enable individual creativity, whether this is held to be good for the individual as such or in virtue of promoting wider socio-economic goods. It is at least a common thought that people are more self-fulfilled if they are creative and society more generally is held to be all the better for enabling individual creativity.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 75: Philosophical Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art , October 2014 , pp. 203 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, ‘All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education’, Report to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, May 1999, National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education.

2 See in this light in particular Zagzebski, Linda, ‘Exemplarist Virtue Theory’, Metaphilosophy 41 (1–2), 2010, 41–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as Baehr, Jason, The Inquiring Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Roberts, Robert C. and Wood, W. Jay, Intellectual Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for distinct but related conceptions of intellectual virtue.

3 See, for example, Boden, Margaret, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, 2nd ed., (London: Routledge, 2004), 1Google Scholar, Gaut, Berys, ‘Creativity and Imagination’ in Gaut, Berys and Livingston, Paisley (eds.) The Creation of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003), 151Google Scholar, Mayer, Richard E., ‘Fifty Years of Creativity Research’, in Sternberg, Robert J. (ed.), Handbook of Creativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 450Google Scholar and Stokes, Dustin, ‘Minimally Creative Thought’, Metaphilosophy, 42, 2011, 658–681CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Boden, Margaret, ‘Creativity in a Nutshell’, in Creativity and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 30Google Scholar.

5 Op. cit. Boden note 2.

6 Op. cit. Gaut and Stokes note 2.

7 See Kieran, Matthew, ‘Creativity as a Virtue of Character’ in Kaufman, Scott Barry and Paul, Elliot Samuel (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 125–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Tim Noakes, ‘Splitting Atoms: Thom Yorke Interview’, Dazed and Confused, February, 2013.

9 See Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper Collins, 1996)Google Scholar and his ‘Happiness and Creativity’, The Futurist, September-October, 1997, 8–12.

10 This is the point of Nozick, Robert's experience machine thought experiment in Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books), 42–45Google Scholar.

11 Plato's Ion, 533c9–535a2, has Socrates characterizing poets as being akin to prophets in being non-rationally, divinely inspired.

12 John Dryden, Epistle to Congreve, 1693, l. 60.

13 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, Section 46.

14 Galton, Francis, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences (London: Macmillan and Co., 1869)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Davis, M., ‘Folk Music Psychology’, The Psychologist, 7 (12), 1994, 537Google Scholar.

16 See Robinson, Ken, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (Oxford: Capstone, 2001)Google Scholar.

17 Bonawitz, Elizabeth, Shafto, Patrick, Gweon, Hyowon, Goodman, Noah D., Spelke, Elizabeth and Schulz, Laura, ‘The Double-Edged Sword of Pedagogy: Instruction Limits Spontaneous Exploration and Discovery’, Cognition, 120 (3), September, 2011, 322–330CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

18 Buchsbaum, Daphna, Gopnik, Alison, Griffiths, Thomas L., Shafto, Patrick, ‘Children's Imitation of Causal Action Sequences is Influenced by Statistical and Pedagogical Evidence’, Cognition, 120 (3), September 2011, 331–340CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

19 See Lillard, Angeline S., Lerner, Matthew D., Hopkins, Emily J., Dore, Rebecca A., Smith, Eric D. and Palmquist, Carolyn M., ‘The Impact of Pretend Play on Children's Development: A Review of the Evidence’, Psychological Bulletin, 139 (1), 2013, 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See Gopnik, Alison, The Philosophical Baby (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)Google Scholar for the idea that our adult minds tend to become comparatively more attention focused, project driven, inhibited and conservative.

21 Robert Hughes, ‘The Genius of Crazy Vinnie’, The Guardian, Thursday, 27 October, 2005.

22 Charlotte Higgins, ‘Big Noise Orchestra's Classical Music Proves Instrumental in Social Change’, The Guardian, Wednesday, 20th June, 2012, p. 1.

23 The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882 (London: Collins, 1958), p. 28Google Scholar.

24 Bloom, Benjamin (ed.), Developing Talent in Young People (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985)Google Scholar.

25 Lauren A. Sosniak, ‘Phases of Learning’ in op. cit. note 19, 409–438.

26 Op. cit. note 19, 3.

27 Ericsson, K. A., Th. Krampe, R. and Tesch-Römer, C., ‘The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance’, Psychological Review, 100, 1993, 363–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Ericsson, K. A., ‘The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance’, in Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovitch, P. J. and Hoffman, R. R. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 700CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 See the Scottish Government Social Research Report, ‘Evaluation of Big Noise, Sistema Scotland’ (Edinburgh: Crown Copyright, Queen's Printer for Scotland, 2011).

30 Ludwig, Arnold M., The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy (New York: Guildford Press, 1995), 149Google Scholar.

31 Jamison, Kay Redfield, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993), 61–72Google Scholar.

32 Op. cit., 76.

33 Andreasen, Nancy C., ‘Creativity and Mental Illness: Prevalence Rates in Writers and Their First-Degree Relatives,’ American Journal of Psychiatry, 144 (10), 1987, 1288–92Google Scholar.

34 Blumer, Dietrich, ‘The Illness of Vincent Van Gogh’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 159 (4), 2002, 519–526CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

35 Ibid.

36 Hurlow, Jonathan and MacCabe, James H., ‘Paradoxes in Creativity and Psychiatric Conditions’, in Kapur, N. (ed.), The Paradoxical Brain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 289–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Benjamin Schwarz, ‘The Other Elizabeth Taylor’, Books Section, Editor's Choice Column, The Atlantic, September 2007, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/09/the-other-elizabeth-taylor/306125/.

38 Neel Mukherjee, ‘A Fiendish Mood: The Mid-Century Novels of ‘the other Elizabeth Taylor’, Boston Review, Jan/Feb 2008, Fiction Section, http://bostonreview.net/BR33.1/mukherjee.php.

39 See Gaut, Berys, ‘Creativity and Rationality’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70 (3), 2012, 264–265CrossRefGoogle Scholar which makes many of these points and gives an extended treatment of this point in a closely related though perhaps less sceptical discussion of much of the same evidence.

40 MacCabe, James H., Lambe, Mats P., Cnattingius, Sven, Sham, Pak C., David, Anthony S., Reichenberg, Abraham, Murray, Robin M. and Hultman, Christina M., ‘Excellent School Performance at Age 16 and Risk of Bipolar Disorder’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 196, 2010, 109–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Jamison op. cit., 105–118.

42 Gaut op. cit., 265, and Thomas, K. M. and Duke, M., ‘Depressed Writing: Cognitive Distortions on the Work of Depressed and Non-Depressed Poets and Writers’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts 1 (4), 2007, 204–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Akinola, M. and Mendes, W. B., ‘The Dark Side of Creativity: Biological Vulnerability and Negative Emotions lead to Greater Artistic Creativity’, Personality and Psychology Bulletin, 34 (12), 2008, 1677–1686CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

44 Ghaznavi, Sharmin and Deckersbach, Thilo, ‘Rumination in Bipolar Disorder: Evidence for an Unquiet Mind’, Biology of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, 2012, 2 (2), 1–11CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

45 Verhaeghen, P., Joormann, J. and Khan, R., ‘Why We Sing the Blues: The Relation Between Self-Reflective Rumination, Mood and Creativity’, Emotion 5, 2005, 226–232CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

46 Flaherty, Alice W., ‘Frontotemporal and Dopaminergic Control of Idea Generation and Creative Drive’, Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493 (1), 2005, 147–153CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

47 Hurlow, Jonathan and MacCabe, James H., ‘Paradoxes in Creativity and Psychiatric Conditions’, in Kapur, N. (ed.), The Paradoxical Brain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 291–3Google Scholar.

48 As excerpted from a radio documentary on The Beatles, Feedback, Radio 4, BBC Radio 4, 20th August 2010.

49 Feist, Gregory J., ‘A Meta-Analysis of Personality and Scientific and Artistic Creativity’, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2 (4), 1998, 299CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

50 Gino, Francesca and Ariely, Dan, ‘The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (3), 2012, 445–459CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

51 op. cit., 449.

52 op. cit., 454–55.

53 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1144 b 4–6 makes something like this distinction. For contrasting elaborations as to what this distinction amounts to see Wolf, Susan, ‘Moral Psychology and the Unity of the Virtues’, Ratio 20, 2007, pp. 145–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sreenivasan, Gopal, ‘Disunity of Virtue’, Journal of Ethics 13 (2/3), 2009, esp. pp. 198–200Google Scholar.

54 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1144 b 30 – 1145 and Aquinas, Thomas, Disputed Questions on Virtue, On the Cardinal Virtues, Article 2, Hause and Murphy edition (New York: Hackett, 2010), 232–241Google Scholar, Martin, Marie A., ‘Hume on Human Excellence’, Hume Studies, XVIII (2), pp. 383–400Google Scholar.

55 Williams, Bernard, ‘Moral Luck’ in his Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 20–39Google Scholar.

56 Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, ‘The Mind of a Con Man’, New York Times, Magazine, April 26, 2013.

57 I would like to thank in particular Matthew Broome, Gregory Currie, Dominic Lopes, James MacCabe, Sam Wren-Lewis and audiences at the Inter-University Center, Dubrovnik, University of British Columbia, University of Hertfordshire, University of Nanterre–Paris X and the RIP ‘Philosophical Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art?’ conference, Leeds, for valuable critical comments and discussion. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the AHRC ‘Method in Philosophical Aesthetics: the Challenge from the Sciences’ project and the Leverhulme Trust.