5 Originality and imagination
Genius and the pursuit of the new: Kant
In presenting a subject matter as a focus for thought and emotional attitude,
distinctively fused to the imaginative exploration of material, works of art
are evidentlyspecial. Where does this special character of art come from? Are
successful artists a special class of people, with capacities the rest of us
altogether lack? Or do they rather exercise in a special way an imaginative
capacity in which we all have a share? What are the roles of training, artistic
tradition, and common culture in the development of artistic ability? Can art
be taught?
It is commonly thought, and especially widely so in modernity, that
artworks are in some way distinctively new and original. Ezra Pound, trans-
lating a dictum of Confucius, titled his 1934 collection of critical essays on
literatureMake it New.^1 John Dewey remarks on“the qualitative novelty that
characterizes every genuine work of art.”^2 In Plato’sIon, Socrates and Ion
agree that though Homer and other poets“all treat of the same subjects,”one
of them–Homer–“speaks well and the rest of them speak worse,”and this
because Homer, like all the good poets, is“inspired, possessed.”^3 Exactly
what is going onin Homerthat makes his poetry different and special? How
does the sort of creative capacity that Homer displays have to do with making
things that are distinctivelynew?
In a useful survey essay, Timothy Gould proposes that our own“modern
and more unified concept of genius”^4 arises out of a constellation of five
(^1) Ezra Pound,Make it New(London: Faber & Faber, 1934).
(^2) Dewey,Art as Experience, p. 288.
(^3) Plato,Ion, 532a, p. 218; 533e, p. 220.
(^4) Timothy Gould,“Genius: Conceptual and Historical Overview,”inEncyclopedia of Aesthetics,
ed. Kelly, vol. II, pp. 287–92 at p. 288A.
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