AG: Well, but there seems to be a shift from creativity as objectification to how

we use the word in the sociology of self-realisation. Here creativity seems to be

a part of the project that we ourselves are.

RS:But it is the self as a process rather than the self as an actor. As I understand
what Hans is getting at here, is that it isn't dwelling in a condition of self-actu-
alisation, which is the Giddens thing. Hans does not want that.

AG: Me neither, but I think my question also has a further direction. We are
talking about creativity in a more artistic sense, but for pragmatists creativity is
an everyday life phenomenon.

RS So is it for artists.
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HJ No.

RS:Absolutely.

HJ: In the everyday life of artists. But this is not everyday life for everybody.

RS Well, we have to discuss that.

HJ: An important point really would be, I think, the point where I can distin-
guish the pragmatists' understanding of creativity from these other understand-
ings. What I said so far about Herder and Marx and others referred to the think-
ing about creativity between 1770 and 1850. Of course, the interesting point
now is that something happened in the middle of the 19th century with regard
to the understanding of creativity, which was very dramatic. Namely, people
got beyond this 'misplaced concreteness', a term I borrow from Whitehead. I
mean, they got beyond the idea that a certain concrete type of action can be
considered the complete realisation of the creative potential that belongs to,
and now comes the question: belongs to what?And here I think there are two
versions. One starts with Schopenhauer and goes through Nietzsche to post-
modernism. It deals with creativity as a phenomenon that somehow belongs to
the 'cosmos', as Schopenhauer puts it. There is a creative force in the universe,
Bergson argued. There are creative forces in the universe that, interestingly,
sort of move human beings around. In Schopenhauer you find the term 'the
will', but 'the will' in Schopenhauer is not an attribute of human beings as in
analytlcal philosophy: is there a free will or not? Rather, in Schopenhauer's
philosophy the will is somehow mythologized. It is a metaphysical notion of the
will, a will that moves you around. So, if you think that you really feel a strong
inclination to do something, then that isjust a delusion. It is not really your will,
then. It is the influence of the metaphysical will on you. He described it with
regard to sexuality, where this metaphysical will plays the strongest tricks on us.
We consider it our strong desire but exactly because it is our strong desire, it is
not really of our own making. That is one version. I think that the pragmatists as
a matter of fact are different from this misplaced concreteness of Marx, Herder