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Mixed Motivations: Creativity as a Virtue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2014

Berys Gaut
Berys Gaut*
Affiliation:
University of St [email protected]
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Extract

The thought that creativity is a kind of virtue is an attractive one. Virtues are valuable traits that are praised and admired, and creativity is a widely celebrated trait in our society. In philosophical ethics, epistemology, and increasingly aesthetics, virtue-theoretical approaches are influential, so an account of creativity as a virtue can draw on well-established theories. Several philosophers, including Linda Zagzebski, Christine Swanton and Matthew Kieran, have argued for the claim that creativity is a virtue, locating this claim within a broader picture of intellectual, ethical and aesthetic virtues respectively. Moreover, a prominent research programme in psychology, led by Teresa Amabile, holds that people have an intrinsic motivation when they are creative, and this seems seamlessly to fit with the view that creativity is a virtue, for it is often held that a requirement for a trait to be a virtue is that the virtuous agent acts from an intrinsic motivation.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 75: Philosophical Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art , October 2014 , pp. 183 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2014 

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References

1 Zagzebski, Linda, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 123–125 and 182–183CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swanton, Christine, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 7; and Kieran, Matthew, ‘Creativity as a Virtue of Character’ in Paul, Elliot Samuel and Kaufman, Scott Barry (eds.), The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar. All of them hedge their claims, however: Zagzebski (op. cit., 125) thinks that creativity lies somewhere between a virtue, and a natural talent and faculty; Swanton thinks that it is not a separate virtue but an aspect of the profile of the virtues; and Kieran holds that it is only ‘exemplary’ creativity that is a virtue. Depending on how his qualifications are spelled out, Kieran's view may in fact be close to the one I defend in this paper.

2 Amabile, Teresa M., Creativity in Context: Update to The Social Psychology of Creativity (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

3 Zagzebski, op. cit., p. 137. Annas, Julia, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 2, also argues for these features, and holds that there is also an integration requirement on virtue (108).

4 Some virtue epistemologists, unmoved by the thought that virtues must be acquired, hold that intellectual virtues include faculties such as sight, hearing and memory. See, for instance, Sosa, Ernest, ‘Knowledge and Intellectual Virtue’, Monist 68 (1985), 226–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greco, John, ‘Virtues and Vices of Virtue Epistemology’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1993), 413–432CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 It does not matter for my purposes whether you agree with the particular examples chosen: what matters is that you agree that there are some excellent traits that can be motivated either intrinsically or extrinsically.

6 The terminology is based on Kant's distinction between acting in accord with duty and acting from duty; he holds that only the latter confers true moral worth on the action. See Kant, Immanuel, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd ed., trans. Ellington, James W. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1993)Google Scholar, Section I.

7 Quoted in Kay, John, Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly (London: Profile Books, 2010)Google Scholar, 82.

8 Cf. the second condition in Aristotle's definition of virtue: ‘for actions expressing virtue ... the agent must also be in the right state when he does them. First, he must know [that he is doing virtuous actions]; second, he must decide on them, and decide on them for themselves; and, third, he must also do them from a firm and unchanging state’; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, Terence (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1985)Google Scholar, 1105a 29–35 (Book II.4).

9 Boden, Margaret A., The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar, 1.

10 See also Grant, James, ‘The Value of Imaginativeness’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2012), 275–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Sawyer, Keith R., Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 275Google Scholar.

12 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Guyer, Paul and Matthews, Eric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 196 (Ak. 318).

13 See my ‘Creativity and Imagination’ in Gaut, Berys and Livingston, Paisley (eds.), The Creation of Art: New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 148–73Google Scholar, at 150.

14 I call this kind of reasons-sensitivity ‘product-value rationality’; for an argument for why its possession is required for someone to be creative, see my ‘Creativity and Rationality’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 70 (2012), 259–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 267–8.

15 Kieran, op. cit.

16 Broadie, Sarah, Ethics with Aristotle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, 89.

17 Plato, Ion, 534d5-e1, in The Collected Dialogues, eds. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

18 Zagzebski, op. cit., 181–2.

19 Kieran, op. cit.

20 Watson, James, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (London: Penguin, 1999)Google Scholar, 46.

21 Flam, Jack, Matisse and Picasso: The Story of their Rivalry and Friendship (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 2003), 37.Google Scholar

22 Quoted in Sternberg, Robert J. and Lubart, Todd I., Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity (New York: The Free Press, 1995)Google Scholar, 242.

23 Singh, Simon, The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-Breaking (London: Fourth Estate, 1999)Google Scholar, chapter 4.

24 Lepper, Mark R., Greene, David and Nisbett, Richard E., ‘Undermining Children's Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward: A Test of the “Overjustification” Hypothesis’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42 (1973), 129–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Amabile, op. cit, 107. This book updates and incorporates Amabile's 1983 book, The Social Psychology of Creativity. The quoted passage is from the earlier incorporated book.

26 Hennessey, Beth A., Amabile, Teresa M. and Martinage, Margaret, ‘Immunizing Children against the Negative Effects of Reward’, Contemporary Educational Psychology 14 (1989), 212–227CrossRefGoogle Scholar (see esp. Study 1).

27 Amabile, op. cit., 119.

28 Hennessey, Beth A., ‘The Creativity-Motivation Connection’ in Kaufman, James C. and Sternberg, Robert J. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 346.

29 Amabile, op. cit, 121.

30 Ibid., 118.

31 Eisenberger, Robert and Rhoades, Linda, ‘Incremental Effects of Reward on Creativity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001), 728–741CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The case is their Study 3.

32 Amabile, op. cit., 109.

33 See Anscombe, G. E. M., Intention, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

34 A more general way to bring out this point is by noting that to show that someone has to be motivated by pleasure in some activity does not show that she is acting from virtue in that activity, even if the activity is in conformity to virtue. For instance, if being motivated to run from pleasure were necessary for someone to participate in sponsored charity runs, this would not prove that she was exercising a virtue in so doing, for she might simply be running out of enjoyment in running, and regard the fact of charity sponsorship as a useful excuse for running.

35 Ibid., 115.

36 Hennessey, op. cit., 346.