Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)
[168]
9. Creativity in the Arts
JACK GLICKMAN
[orig. 1976]
I
What is it to be creative?
The answer usually given
is that there is a "creative process,"
and most writers on creativity have taken their task
to be a description of
...
activity
...
...
I will argue that that is the wrong way to go about characterizing creativity,
that one must attend to the artistic
product
rather than to the
process.
Well . . . speaking again as a twice-over Music Major, immediately I see one obvious candidate explanation for why most writers on creativity would emphasize the process rather than the product: because they are teachers of prospective practitioners, not of prospective scholars; their prospective-practitioner students cannot learn the process directly from inspection of the product.
