What’s Not to Like about Innovation?

Like creativity, innovation is a diffuse concept that requires a significant amount of rehabilitation to be used in an effective, precise way. The two concepts are indeed often intertwined. But I would want to argue that “innovation” is analogous to corporate personhood—and deserving of the same liberal ire.

OK, let me unpack this a bit. First, it appears as if organizations more often (are said to) seek innovation whereas individuals seek creativity. To wit: “innovation will lead us to the next big product.” Creativity seems to align better with masterpieces and experiments.

Innovation is “new;” creativity is “original.”

Both these statements drive me a bit bonkers (insofar as they are often unsubstantiated) , but can of course be meaningful and profound. But are these perhaps two sides of the same coin? Or should they be understood entirely differently?

Shouldn’t they be viewed analogously to persons and corporate persons —one aspirational, and the other antagonistic to the aspiration?

Yet at every turn both concepts will resist definition. Is innovation about technological change? Well, not exactly. Is creativity about imagination? Well, again, not exactly. An essay would have to focus on a broad-yet-common conceptualization of each term, and locate historical uses that exemplified their similarities and contrasts.

Could pitting them against each other be instrumental in expressing value for humanity over technology-fo-technologies-sake? Maybe!

It seems worth trying.

Richard Eldridge Day

The first chapter to Richard Eldridge’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art provided a good basis for discussion in class last week. He really shows off his interest in Romanticism, and his leanings towards a Pragmatic philosophy of art. We talked about the problem of “not having a perfect philosophy,” located some philosophizing on a few spectrums-of-discourse, and looked at the history (and problem) of metaphysics as a foundational pillar of the philosophy of art. Good stuff for a first discussion!

Gauguin’s artistic quest to achieve moral excellence

The following excerpt is from an unpublished essay on Gauguin (the artist) and Genius (the concept). First explored in a chapter in my doctoral dissertation, my argument is that Gauguin was a highly moral person – in spite of his sometimes reckless and irresponsible actions. I think this is an important counterintuitive case, for it allows us to consider how different (and sometimes competing) aspects of personhood define not only our own conception of morality, but moral philosophy itself.

From the introduction:

Why did middle-aged Paul Gauguin abandon his family and social context to live as a poor, reclusive painter? Could a moral conception be said to have sealed his fate to live in Tahiti as an estranged and unhealthy expatriate until his untimely death? The answer may lie in his artistic oeuvre, which includes over forty self-portraits in several different mediums, including more than twenty oil paintings. Here I argue that his self-portraits, in conjunction with his self-reflection in many letters to his wife and friends, form evidence that a conception of artistic genius became a touchstone of his art and life — a comprehensive conception of “goodness” that shaped his reception of tradition and transformed his whole life into a mythic quest.

Further evidence comes in the form of philosophical context. Romanticism and religion, two influential social currents of the Parisian artworld, fed into Gauguin’s perception of himself as an artist — he was, after all, first persuaded to take his painting seriously by his contemporaries. Reflection on spirituality became a prominent feature of his “artistic consciousness,” and became a theme that ran through his work in self-portraiture. This reflection, against a backdrop of Romantic and religious imagery, led Gauguin to discover a concept of artistic genius — heightened by Romanticism’s obsession with aesthetic transcendence — that especially propelled his artistic and spiritual quests.