The Paradox of Creative Agency

Most theories of merit accept a control principle: people alike in everything they voluntarily control deserve the same assessment. I argue that the creative origination of ideas is a counterexample. Two people can share the same voluntary profile (same preparation, intentions, foresight, facilitation, selection, and execution) and still only one originates an exemplary idea. She deserves a kind of praise her counterpart does not and voluntarism cannot explain why. Its defender will call the difference mere luck. I answer that it is constitutive luck, which concerns a person's nature -- who she is -- and we rightly credit people for it. Following Kant's idea of genius as nature giving the rule to art, I argue that origination is the creator's own nature acting as her. Part of why we value creativity, I conclude, is that it reveals this part of our nature, deeper than the will, to ourselves and to one another.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 12:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Olin Language Center, Room 115

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