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Toward a transcendental account of creativity. Kant and Merleau-Ponty on the creative power of judgment and creativity as institution

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Abstract

Several works published in the last decades defend the claim that the concept of creativity should be demystified. With the aim of showing that creativity is not an obscure power owned by only few individuals and free from constraints, authors working at the intersection field between philosophy and cognitive science have notably focused on the structure and evolution of cognitive mechanisms underlying our creative capacities. While taking up the suggestion that we should try not to mystify creativity, this article argues that what is required for such demystification is primarily a transcendental and phenomenological inquiry. Kant’s and Merleau-Ponty’s works are here discussed in order to develop such a transcendental inquiry into creativity. Both Kant and Merleau-Ponty bring to the fore the conditions of possibility for creative acts, and highlight fundamental role of creativity itself in the formation of meaningfulness. The keystone of both philosophers’ inquiries is the emphasis on the interdependence between creativity and rules. Yet, due to the different approaches to the transcendental, Kant’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts do not fully converge, but should rather be considered as complementary.

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Notes

  1. See, notably, the 2015 special issue of the journal Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy (http://www.metodo-rivista.eu/index.php/metodo/issue/view/11/showToc), as well as Heinämaa et al. (2014) and Gardner and Grist (2015).

  2. On this view, notably inspired by Husserl, see Summa (2014), chapter 3.

  3. See, for instance, Husserl (1950, p. 177 f., 1959, p. 75 f., 1986, p. 161 f., 209 f.). On this topic, see Trappe (1996), who adopts the concept of transcendental experience as a guiding thread to systematically interpret Husserl’s philosophy on the basis of the reassessment of the phenomenological theory of method.

  4. See Summa (2014), chapter 3, for a discussion of the reasons why Kant’s and Husserl’s approaches to the transcendental and the a priori, in spite of all differences, should not be considered as irreconcilable. A similar strategy is here adopted in order to investigate the meaning of a transcendental account of creativity for Kant and Merleau-Ponty.

  5. KrV A 130/B169/(Kant 1998, p. 267)

  6. See, EEKU, AA 20, pp. 201 f./(Kant 2000, pp. 8 f.) and KU AA 05, p. 171 f/(Kant 2000, pp. 59 f.).

  7. KrV A 132/B172/(Kant 1998, p. 268).

  8. KrV A 132/B172/(Kant 1998, p. 268).

  9. KrV A 134/B173/(Kant 1998, p. 269).

  10. KrV A 134/B173/(Kant 1998, p. 269).

  11. KrV A 134/B173 footnote/(Kant 1998, pp. 268-269).

  12. EEKU AA 20, p. 201 f/(Kant 2000, p. 15 f.); KU AA 05, pp. 179 f.(Kant 2000, pp. 66 f.)

  13. KU AA 05, p. 385/(Kant 2000, p. 257).

  14. KU AA 05, p. 385/(Kant 2000, p. 257).

  15. KU AA 05, p. 385/(Kant 2000, p. 257).

  16. EEKU AA 20, p. 221/(Kant 2000, p. 23).

  17. KU AA 05, p. 286 f./(Kant 2000, p. 167 f.).

  18. For the discussion of the only apparent inconsistencies of the idea of “lawfulness without a law” and, most importantly, for the relevance of Kant's approach for the formation of empirical concepts, see also Ginsborg (1997).

  19. KU AA 05, pp. 236-7/(Kant 2000, p. 121).

  20. KU AA 05, pp. 239 f./(Kant 2000, pp. 123 f.).

  21. KU AA 05, pp. 237/(Kant 2000, p. 121).

  22. KU AA 05, pp. 237/(Kant 2000, pp. 121-122).

  23. KU AA 05, p. 307/(Kant 2000, p. 186).

  24. KU AA 05, p. 307/(Kant 2000, p. 186).

  25. Cf. KU AA 05, pp. 313 f./(Kant 2000, p. 191 f.) and Allison (2001, p. 281).

  26. KU AA 05, p. 308/(Kant 2000, p. 186-7).

  27. “According to these presuppositions, genius is the exemplary originality of the natural endowment of a subject for the free use of his cognitive faculties. In this way the product of a genius (in respect of that in it which is to be ascribed to genius, not to possible learning or schooling) is an example, not for imitation (for then that which is genius in it and constitutes the spirit of the work would be lost), but for emulation by another genius, who is thereby awakened to the feeling of his own originality, to exercise freedom from coercion in his art in such a way that the latter thereby itself acquires a new rule, by which the talent shows itself as exemplary” KU AA 05, p. 318/(Kant 2000, pp. 195-196). See also, KU AA 05, p. 232/(Kant 2000, p. 116).

  28. KU AA 05, p. 308/(Kant 2000, p. 187).

  29. Crawford (1985) argues that the creative construction of concepts is also typical of mathematical knowledge, and more particularly of the processes of constructing a concept and exhibiting it in intuition. Accordingly, Kant’s remarks at § 47 on the difference between the effability of the mathematician’s discoveries and the ineffability of the artist’s creation processes derives from a confusion between ordo inveniendi/cognoscendi and ordo docendi. Not only for the artist, but also for the scientist the moment of invention and discovery has those “aesthetic” features connected with the power of productive imagination. What speaks for this is the fact that scientists as well are often incapable to exactly say how they came to a specific idea.

  30. KU AA 05, p. 313/(Kant 2000, p. 192).

  31. KU AA 05, p. 314/(Kant 2000, p. 193).

  32. KU AA 05, p. 314/(Kant 2000, p. 192).

  33. KU AA 05, p. 315/(Kant 2000, p. 193).

  34. On Husserl’s reading of Kant’s a priori, see (Summa 2014, pp. 40 f.; 56 f.)

  35. Gardner (2015) develops a very articulated and convincing interpretation of the transcendental nature of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception, showing how this theory is aimed at overcoming the common problems in the assumptions of both empiricism and intellectualism by means of a new account of the ultimate ground for experience and cognition. Such a ground is precisely the pre-objective being of perception. In Gardner’s reading, Merleau-Ponty’s endeavor can be considered in analogy with Kant’s, applying to the understanding the tribunal that Kant’s set up with respect to reason. The result “is a new kind of transcendental idealism, as it were a transcendental idealism of the second degree, which denies not only that empirical reality can be grasped by concepts independent of intuition, but also that the perceived world owes its reality and cognizability to the Kantian conjunction of intuition with objectivity concepts. In this way Merleau-Ponty’s concept of pre-objective being can be regarded as a further development of the Kantian concept of appearance.” (Gardner 2015, p. 314). Being aware that the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty as a transcendental philosopher is not universally accepted, and that there are prominent scholars claiming that his focus on psychological research brings him to depart from transcendental philosophy and to come closer to a non-transcendental philosophy of mind (cf. Dreyfus 1984, 1999, 2005; Gallagher 2008), I nevertheless subscribe to Gardner’s interpretation and to the critiques that he raises toward the so-called psychological interpretation. Garner also argues that the real addressee of Merleau-Ponty’s arguments was not the convinced naturalist or the scientific realist, but rather a transcendental philosopher who is, as it were, prisoner of the assumptions of objective thought. This might seem at variance with some of the conclusions I will try to draw and with my overall suggestion that the transcendental account of creativity in both Kant and Merleau-Ponty might be also fruitful within the context of current interdisciplinary investigations on creativity. Again, I do agree with Gardner concerning the target of Merleau-Ponty’s inquiries. Yet, I also believe that transcendental philosophy, if correctly recognized, also has an impact on how we should conceive of empirical research. Of course, and here again I agree with Gardner, the reader of such a proposal must be someone who does not simply dismiss the relevance of transcendental inquiries, but rather someone who is convinced of their general value and also of their function with respect to empirical research.

  36. In this sense, I agree with Baldwin’s (2007) “interdependence thesis” concerning the relation between speaking and spoken speech. His understanding of such a relation on the basis of the distinction between following already given rules and establishing new rules by means of differentiation comes close to the account of creativity I wish to defend.

  37. In the 1954 course, Merleau-Ponty particularly considers in these terms the introduction of planimetric perspective in Renaissance painting. Rather than being the formulation of the rules of natural vision, planimetric perspective introduces and institutes new rules of vision by technically making tridimensionality visible on a plane ground. This has changed the system of spatial apprehension, becoming exemplary not only in the further development of the history of painting, but for our understanding of spatial perception and the relationship between the perceiving subject as a point of view on the spatial surroundings with its objects (Merleau-Ponty 2003, pp. 80-82).

  38. In this chapter, Merleau-Ponty is also critical toward the intellectualistic conception of judgment in Descartes and Kant, for whom judgment is considered to be “what sensation lacks to make perception possible” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, p. 40). Accordingly, judgment would only be an explicative principle, adopted in order to explain how it is possible that there is some form of knowledge already in the perception of individual objects. In so doing, Merleau-Ponty seems to neglect the creative power which we have seen to be characteristic of Kant’s theory of judgment.

  39. See, notably, Wertheimer analysis of productive thinking in experimental studies on Gauss’s problem, as well as in Galileo’s and Einstein’s formation of new concepts and theories (Wertheimer 1959, pp. 108-142; 205-233).

  40. This is also emphasized in Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on institution and “universal history” (Merleau-Ponty 2003, pp. 105 f.), which I cannot discuss in more detail here.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Andrea Altobrando, Serena Feloj, Stefan Kristensen, and Karl Mertens for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Summa, M. Toward a transcendental account of creativity. Kant and Merleau-Ponty on the creative power of judgment and creativity as institution. Cont Philos Rev 50, 105–126 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-016-9391-3

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