Phenomenology Of Creativity

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF CREATIVITY: HISTORY, PARADOXES, PERSONALITY By Samad I. Seyidov One of the principal aims of the book is to provide readers with a concise overview of both intellectual history and the leading concepts of international science and philosophy that impact the field of the psychology of creativity. The target audiences for the book are researchers in psychology, philosophy, history, literature, and University students. The book presents a contrasting study of the views of ancient Indian, Chinese, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Russian philosophers on creativity. It also discusses the subject of creativity as viewed by Freud, Jung, Adler, the Gestalt school, and other prominent Western psychologists. A special place is provided for an overview of the history of Soviet psychology, and of the revival of psychology in Azerbaijan after the fall of the Soviet Union. The author emphasizes the importance of the social environment in determining the development of the personality. He states that most personal activity is directed at serving the values of the surrounding society, not the values of the person himself. The author considers that creativity is a psychic defense mechanism which people use to solve everyday problems in order to restore their inner and outer equilibrium. Through references to the world's leading psychology schools, the author reveals new paradoxes of creativity such as "logic," "morality," "quantity," "universal availability," "desirability," "searching," "the model," "the narrowing of the unconscious," "determinants," and "the product." He describes the distinctive features of the creative personality, namely the capacity for metaphorical thinking, flexibility, inner vision, neutralization, originality, verbal facility, a rich imagination, field-independence etc. [endorsements] Samad Seyidov's study of creativity comes at the right time and from the right place. Not only are we passing through a period of rapid change, particularly in such fields as nanotechnology, neuroscience, physiological psychology, and genetics, but also the participants in this change are no longer limited to a small group of western countries, but are increasingly appearing in different parts of the world. If the social upheaval that these changes are having in established societies is great, it is even greater in newly emerging societies. Are we equipped to manage these changes, and can the creative arts and sciences join to interpret them, drawing on their varied traditions in order to do so? That is surely the vital question that we carry away from Professor Seyidov's important study of personality and creativity. Prof. Humphrey Tonkin, President Emeritus at the University of Hartford (USA) "The Phenomenology of Creativity" by Samad Seyidov is not only an interesting book, but a fascinating one. The Rector of Azerbaijan Languages University did a large and deep investigation through the history of the human creativity and its resorts to obtain conclusions about the nature of this phenomenon. The studies on the creativity made by Prof. Seyidov are able to be in the attention at every researcher in that area. Dr. Horia Gârbea, Romanian writer, Vice-President of The Romanian Cultural Institute Key principles of psychology are marked by paradoxes and contradictions, whose proper address requires creativity. This complex but intellectually fascinating phenomenon Seyidov's study explores with admirable insight and clarity. Prof. Eleni Karamalengu, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens

The book presents a contrasting study of the views of ancient Indian, Chinese, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Russian philosophers on creativity. It also discusses the subject of creativity as viewed by Freud, Jung, Adler, the Gestalt school, and other prominent Western psychologists. A special place is provided for an overview of the history of Soviet psychology, and of the revival of psychology in Azerbaijan after the fall of the Soviet Union. The author emphasizes the importance of the social environment in determining the development of the personality. He states that most personal activity is directed at serving the values of the surrounding society, not the values of the person himself. The author considers that creativity is a psychic defense mechanism which people use to solve everyday problems in order to restore their inner and outer equilibrium. Samad Seyidovs study of creativity comes at the right time and from the right place. Not only are we passing through a period of rapid change, particularly in such fields as nanotechnology, neuroscience, physiological psychology, and genetics, but also the participants in this change are no longer limited to a small group of western countries, but are increasingly appearing in different parts of the world. If the social upheaval that these changes are having in established societies is great, it is even greater in newly emerging societies. Are we equipped to manage these changes, and can the creative arts and sciences join to interpret them, drawing on their varied traditions in order to do so? That is surely the vital question that we carry away from Professor Seyidovs important study of personality and creativity. Prof. Eleni Karamalengu, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens

In this text, the history of phenomenological research on learning is synthesized and brought forward into the areas of existential learning, the development of enthusiasm about learning (from childhood through adulthood), and paradigmatic creative experience. Original research findings are derived using the Giorgi method of descriptive phenomenological analysis in psychology. The results, structural and eidetic in nature, are then integrated from a holistic developmental viewpoint: that of Existential-Humanistic Self-Development Theory (EHSDT). An evolving developmental partnership between learning and creativity emerges as the proper conceptual frame for considering optimal growth and the relative maturity of situated becoming oneself (i.e., the process of self-cultivation). The resulting perspective is supported by cutting edge trends in neuroscience and related to pedagogy and education.

Edwin Jones sets out to show that a phenomenological analysis of meaning can contribute to a theory of creativity in several ways. It can clarify the concept of creative expression and resolve its paradoxical appearance. Creativity must have its roots in already existing meanings and at the same time has to generate new meanings. To illustrate, Jones shows that a phenomenological analysis can render more comprehensible the spiritual dilemma suffered by Cézanne. The artist could not render intellectually understandable to himself what he was attempting as an artist. A phenomenological approach shows, according to Jones, that the dilemma was generated in Cézanne's mind in part by a certain implicit Galilean concept of Nature that Cézanne brought to his work -- a concept that phenomenology has only recently begun to dispel by demonstrating a parallel between creativity in philosophy and creativity in art. Jones employs Heidegger and Cézanne as concrete examples and Husserl and Merleau-Ponty as other important elements in his essay. Ultimately, Jones argues for a parallel between creativity in science and philosophy, and creativity in the arts. His is an original synthesis of the work of the three thinkers he interprets and of Cézanne's late work, and his study should be of considerable interest to philosophers, art critics, and artists of a theoretical or reflective bent.

Artistic creation has proven remarkably resistant to philosophical analysis. Artists have long struggled to explain how they do what they do, and philosophers have struggled along with them. This study does not attempt to offer a comprehensive account of all creativity or all art. Instead it tries to identify an essential feature of an activity that has been cloaked in mystery for as long as history records. Jeff Mitscherling and Paul Fairfield argue that the process by which art is created has a good deal in common with the experience of the audience of a work, and that both experiences may be described phenomenologically in ways that show surprising affinities with what artists themselves often report.

It would seem that modern humanity has unthroned the human spirit, undercutting the very foundation of the validity of truth, moral values and principles. There appears to be no attempt to discern what is beautiful and true: it is functional and pragmatic usefulness that seem to dominate human evaluations and transactions with other humans and, indeed, animals. Humanity is becoming detached from the `higher' aesthetic, moral and intellectual works of the human spirit and thus the life of the spirit is often situated on the other side of a gulf, opposed to science with its rationality. Culture is in danger of becoming reduced to science. In other words, the great metaphysical questions - those of telos, of sense - often are answered in terms of scientific conceptions. But these are at least incomplete, if not fragmentary, and in principle hypothetical, which still leaves the questions unanswered. But it is culture that is the manifestation of the human spirit, being the historical process of human self-interpretation-in-existence. All manifestations of the creative forge of the human being find a role in the fabric of culture, which involves progressively widening circles of the human community, demanding an integration and attunement with others in their changing conditions of life. This consideration of culture involves all areas of philosophical reflection: moral, aesthetic, metaphysical, epistemological, semiological, cognitive, and more.

Self-individualization has been interpreted as the process in which the all-embracing Self unfolds into an infinite variety of different individ uals, plants, animals and men. A comparison of the different ways in which the Self manifests itself in the biological and psychological devel opmental processes, or in a visionary image of the undivided Self, reveals the same basic structure of expression. The Self, the one, is represented by a circular domain, and comprises a basic inner duality, the two, creating a paradox of conflicting opposites. In the undivided Self the two give rise to a trinity in which, however, a quatemity is hidden. The latter expresses itself in this world as the four basic forces, the four Elements or the four main archetypes, specifying the possibilities or development in space and time. Self-individualization starts with the first appearance of a primary structure of an individual sub-Self. This is the fifth basic force, the fifth Element. Further development is character ized by four generative principles: 1st, the principle of wholeness: connection and integration (being oriented to remaining whole or restoring wholeness); 2nd, the principle of complementarity and com pensation (a periodic shift between opposing influences); 3rd, the enstructuring principle (causing the relative stability of the spatial appear ance of the manifest structure), and 4th, the principle of gesture (resulting in a gradual stepwise development of that structure into a full-grown individual).

This third volume of American University Publications in Philos ophy continues the tradition of presenting books in the series shaping current frontiers and new directions in phi. osophical reflection. In a period emerging from the neglect of creativity by positivism, Professors Dutton and Krausz and their eminent colleagues included in the collection challenge modern philosophy to explore the concept of creativity in both scientific inquiry and artistic production. In view of the fact that Professor Krausz served at one time as Visiting Professor of Philosophy at The American University we are especially pleased to include this volume in the series. HAROLD A. DURFEE, for the editors of American University Publications in Philosophy EDITORS' PREFACE While the literature on the psychology of creativity is substantial, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the subject by philos ophers in recent years. This fact is no doubt owed in 'part to the legacy of positivism, whose tenets have included a sharp distinction between what Hans Reichenbach called the context of discovery and the context of justification. Philosophy in this view must address itself to the logic of justifying hypotheses; little of philo sophical importance can be said about the more creative business of discovering them. That, positivism has held, is no more than a merely psychological question: since there is no logic of discovery or creation, there can be no philosophical reconstruction of it.

This ground-breaking book provides a unique insight into artistic creativity that lays the foundation for a new theory. Through a review of documents such as essays, published interviews, lecture notes, and more, the book uses case studies of six contemporary artists to provide a detailed phenomenological study of artistic creativity. The book offers a narrative account of six contemporary artists and their ways of approaching art-making. Through comprehensive accounts based on the individual artist’s descriptions, the book reveals an existential dimension of art-making that explores the inspirational moment, the state of mind during creativity, how creativity can originate in a spontaneous stream of consciousness, and how emotions play a major role in the creative process. The book sets out a unique understanding of artistic creativity as an alternative to the prevailing cognitive conceptions within psychology. Offering novel insights into how art is created and can influence the human psyche, the book will primarily appeal to academics, scholars, and post-graduate students within the area of creativity research, psychological aesthetics, and the psychology of art, as well as those with an interest in art and artistic work.