A Extraordinarily Brief Philosophy of Creativity
What actually happens at the moment of creative "spark"?
Today’s post is indeed extraordinarily brief because I have a deadline looming for revisions of a book manuscript, not fiction this time but rather a scholarly monograph on the arts. The book is called The Way of Beauty: A Philosophical Reflection, and it will be published in April 2024 by Word on Fire Academic (part of Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Ministries).
HOWEVER, while brief, this post at least has the virtue of being “fresh out of the oven,” as it involves thoughts about creativity I have been thinking a lot about in recent days as I’ve been writing the last major section of new material for the book.
But before I offer you my thoughts, let me first express my warm gratitude to all of you who have purchased my new novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, released last Wednesday from Chrism Press. The book is available here at the Chrism Press website or here on Amazon.
If you are reading or will soon read the book, I would appreciate if you would consider leaving a review on Amazon. As you may know, Amazon reviews are hugely important when it comes to sales on their site. Reviews basically help a book come more quickly to the attention of folks browsing Amazon looking for something new to read. But keep in mind: a review doesn’t have to be an essay! It can be a single sentence, or a very short paragraph. Of course, I ask only for your sincere estimate of the book. This is not a plea for a “sweetheart” review.
Now, without any further ado…
An Extraordinarily Brief Philosophy of Creativity
Creativity, first and foremost, is not the act of an isolated artist, siting alone in his or her garret. Look to the greatest artists, and you will see that they were always part of a communal artistic practice that was in turn part of a tradition of artists pursuing similar questions through their art.
J.R.R. Tolkien preferred the word “sub-creation” to creativity, because he rightly understood that human art is radically dependent upon, and imitates, God’s creative act.
Creative inspiration is often realized in the midst of the imitation of a model. (See the image at the top of this post.)
Creativity is an inquiry, a seeking after truth.
Creativity is curiosity, a wondering about something marvelous about the world. (The “marvelous” is not always the nice or the pretty or the comforting.)
To be curious about the world, the world must—despite all the evil and suffering contained within it—be affirmed as fundamentally good.
If we affirm the world as good, we are loving it. Loving it with our wills but also with what St. Thomas Aquinas calls the “sensible appetites,” which include what we commonly call the emotions.
Creativity is thus a loving union with the beloved: the object in the world we are curious about.
The goal of creative inquiry, once again, is truth. Understanding. This act of understanding does not involve intellectual work. It is not discursive. It is more like a glance or a look, but of the mind. It is the mind’s registering, in a single “glance,” something essential about the beloved object.
Intellectual work (e.g. research) may well be necessary as a prelude to understanding.
The five external senses are also involved in creativity, as they are our first contact with the world.
Involved, too, are what St. Thomas calls the “internal senses,” namely, imagination, memory, and perhaps especially what he calls the cogitative sense (the connection of which to creativity would require a much longer post).
This one from the British comedian John Cleese’s little book, Creativity: the biggest enemy of creativity is distraction. They say it takes the mind 20 minutes to get back into deep focus after a single interruption.
Strategies (all of which can make use of imitation):
hybridization: the yoking together of two styles or genres (e.g. Shakespeare’s mixing of elements from Roman drama with elements from medieval mystery plays)
interanimation: importing into one’s own tradition strategies, aims, and values from a wholly other artform and its tradition (e.g. film soundtracks)
amplification: a formal modification that expands the presiding means for achieving the prevailing goals of a given genre or artform (e.g. Shakespeare didn’t invent the soliloquy, but amplified it by a greater emphasis upon the interior life of the character).
(No time to cite my sources. But please know I make no special claims to originality.)
Which one of these points strikes you as most interesting? Let me know and I will pursue it in a future post.
Have a great rest of your week!
Daniel
Many fine points here (and perhaps all the more highlighted by the brevity); I'm glad you didn't let any fear of incompleteness keep you from writing!
I imagine you have much more to say about #4-9 that would be inspiring reading, but from a more technical angle, I would also be interested in exploring strategies of interanimation: that sounds like something of an application of Aquinas' maxim to value truth wherever it might be found, and I for one would appreciate more concrete elaboration.
I think you should retitle this "Extraordinarily Thorough..." because you've touched on pretty much everything! Nice to see it all in a short space. My personal fave is #5, because I spend my days contemplating our marvelous world and find endless creative fuel in questions about it.