Creation, Genius, Innovation: Towards a Conceptual Genealogy of Western Creativity (Creativity)

Main funder

Funder's project number: 317276

Funds granted by main funder (€)

Funding program

Project timetable

Project start date: 01/09/2018

Project end date: 31/08/2023

Summary

The project studies the development of the concept of creativity in the history of Western philosophical modernity, introducing a new perspective on the theological and philosophical roots of the contemporary discourse of creativity. It focuses on three key conceptual transformations: (1) the philosophical radicalization of the Judeo-Christian notion of divine creation in late medieval thought, (2) the early modern emergence of the creative genius, and (3) the evolutionary model of creative adaptation as the basic nonteleological tendency of life, reflected in a contemporary "metaphysics of creativity." According to the central hypothesis, the genealogy of creativity reflects the modern focus on active and autonomous subjectivity and of the production of novelty as metaphysical Archimedean points. The main methods applied are Foucauldian archaeology and genealogy of discursive formations, conceptual history, and the interpretive model of philosophical hermeneutics.

Principal Investigator

Primary responsible unit

Fields of science

Related publications and other outputs