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Does morality stifle the creative spirit?

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For example, I am thinking of creative geniuses like Rimbaud and Nietzsche. Was their amorality essential to their creativity? I am also thinking about da Vinci and his war machines. He thought up a lot of really creative ways to kill people. There are plenty of other examples of this from Archimedes to Oppenheimer. If these creative geniuses had been more concerned with the consequences of their engineering would this have made them less creative or just redirect their energies?

@Deckard,

I think in some cases their amorality was their creativity. Is it ridiculous to suggest that we experience biography as performance art?

I think that the use an engineer makes of his genius or energy is related to time and chance, including how compatible social demand for his creativity is with his moral ideals -- these themselves arguably related to time and chance.

I like your questions in any case.

@Deckard,

Reconstructo;110066 wrote:

I think in some cases their amorality was their creativity. Is it ridiculous to suggest that we experience biography as performance art?

Do you mean their amorality was their creation?

@Deckard,

I think it depends on whether the 'morality' is understood as something imposed from outside. Certainly morality as a sense of 'you should do this and not do that' imposed by authority is a stifling force and causes a lot of conflict and neuroses. Then again, many creative individuals have found their voice rebelling against just this type of thing so it became 'grist to the mill'. But I think a real big danger is thinking that being immoral amounts to an assertion of your individuality. Old Nick uses that bait to perfection.

@Deckard,

For many creative geniuses, their creativity may have been essential to their rejection of common values; one can understand that a unique view of the world might also include a unique (or at least uncommon) view of morality, and that a confidence in their vision as genuinely truthful could extend to their actions. Or to put it another way, if one lives an aesthetic mode of existence, then it may apply to one's morality as well; and, since art itself is amoral (or non-moral), so one's morality would be as well.

This may, however, be an exaggerated Romantic caricature of the artist as Hero. Rimbaud abandoned his poetry at, as I remember, the age of 19 and turned, or attempted to become petty bourgeoise; Nietzsche in private life was extremely polite to strangers, served in the Army, and sought marriage. Neither Goethe nor Wagner nor Joyce, while perhaps sexually promiscuous, were particularly known for advocating or practicing a different moral standard.

@Deckard,

Deckard;110064 wrote:

For example, I am thinking of creative geniuses like Rimbaud and Nietzsche. Was their amorality essential to their creativity? I am also thinking about da Vinci and his war machines. He thought up a lot of really creative ways to kill people. There are plenty of other examples of this from Archimedes to Oppenheimer. If these creative geniuses had been more concerned with the consequences of their engineering would this have made them less creative or just redirect their energies?

I am as creative as ever since I have stopped being wicked.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;110120 wrote:

I am as creative as ever since I have stopped being wicked.

Can you say any more about this? Your creative work must have changed somewhat as you moved away from wickedness?

@Deckard,

This topic reminded me of an Iranian film maker, who's films are regarded as some of the most creative and original by film critics all over the world. I'm sorry I can't remember his name or his films. Films in Iran must adhere strictly to the limits of Iranian society. So women on screen must be appropriately dressed and explicit violence is not allowed etc. Even with all these limitations, his films were considered by many to be superior to Hollywood films that have at their disposal much more money and freedom to do more things on screen. When commenting on why he thinks this was so, the director pointed out that having certain restrictions forces a person to be more creative to make their ideas stand out. Having a complete blank canvas with no limits can be overwhelming. I think that's why many great thinkers from Europe came about under the oppression of the Church. The limits set by society forced them to become creative.

@josh0335,

josh0335;110145 wrote:

This topic reminded me of an Iranian film maker, who's films are regarded as some of the most creative and original by film critics all over the world. I'm sorry I can't remember his name or his films. Films in Iran must adhere strictly to the limits of Iranian society. So women on screen must be appropriately dressed and explicit violence is not allowed etc. Even with all these limitations, his films were considered by many to be superior to Hollywood films that have at their disposal much more money and freedom to do more things on screen. When commenting on why he thinks this was so, the director pointed out that having certain restrictions forces a person to be more creative to make their ideas stand out. Having a complete blank canvas with no limits can be overwhelming. I think that's why many great thinkers from Europe came about under the oppression of the Church. The limits set by society forced them to become creative.

Thanks for that example josh. I've always like Robert Frost for saying that writing free verse is like "playing tennis without a net". I want to extend that metaphor to something like "Creativity without any sense of morality is like playing tennis without a net."

There's also something of Marcuse's "repressive desublimation" with respect to the creative process waiting in the wings of this thread.

@Deckard,

"No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job." E. Pound, I think.

I agree that it's Romantic excess to think that amorality is true freedom. I find Hegel's view of freedom more convincing, which is to embrace the law as a reflection of one's desire. That would be, for instance, to obey the 10 commandments because you have affirmed them rationally, aesthetically, etc.

Lawlessness is an impossible ideal I think, for if practiced it would itself be a law. In the same way that calling the world absurd is to make some sense of it, to insist upon its absurdity, thus defining it.

@Reconstructo,

jeeprs;110083 wrote:

I think it depends on whether the 'morality' is understood as something imposed from outside. Certainly morality as a sense of 'you should do this and not do that' imposed by authority is a stifling force

Reconstructo;110311 wrote:

I agree that it's Romantic excess to think that amorality is true freedom. I find Hegel's view of freedom more convincing, which is to embrace the law as a reflection of one's desire. That would be, for instance, to obey the 10 commandments because you have affirmed them rationally, aesthetically, etc.

I think maybe Hegel was trying to make a movement from a morality that is imposed towards a morality that inspires - inspiration being much more friendly to the creative spirit than imposition.

@Deckard,

I think you're right. I think he wanted morality to be a living force congruent with our better selves, rather than something we experience as imposed and alien to ourselves. I find it fascinating that he founded his system at first upon love, rather than the struggle for recognition. In any case, he strikes me as a good example of the attempt to fuse science and religion.

@Reconstructo,

Does amorality free the creative spirit?
No because to be moral means to be both creative and with spirit.
Does amorality have spirit?
I doubt it as I have never met it.
However something about the mob seems to.

@Deckard,

How much of our great art is the presentation of immorality? Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Byron, Nabokov, Dostoevsky....

Sometimes the artist wanders into the Black Forest, and lives to tell the tale....

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;110363 wrote:

I think you're right. I think he wanted morality to be a living force congruent with our better selves, rather than something we experience as imposed and alien to ourselves. I find it fascinating that he founded his system at first upon love, rather than the struggle for recognition. In any case, he strikes me as a good example of the attempt to fuse science and religion.

Sorry my Hegel isn't all that great. Do you mean he founded his system at first upon love and then changed his mind? If so this helps my understanding a lot.

I've read some of Hegel's early stuff where he argues against Positive Religion. Positive religion is certainly similar to morality imposed from the outside. And what Hegel opposes to positive religion, philosophical religion is at least somewhat similar to a morality that inspires.

I am also aware of the struggle for recognition approach which I associate with the master slave conflict.

Was there a major shift between early Hegel and later Hegel? Or is their some connection between these two approaches; did one lead into the other?

Feel free to recommend a website or book if explaining this would take to long. In the mean time I'll be looking through Stanford's Hegel entry.

@Deckard,

Well I do not know about the "creative" spirit but "morality" stifles quite a few other spirits.

@prothero,

prothero;110473 wrote:

Well I do not know about the "creative" spirit but "morality" stifles quite a few other spirits.

Morality can also invigorate the spirit(s). For example Diligence and Courage are consider moral virtues whereas Sloth and Cowardice are not.

I do take your point that the creative spirit could use further explanation. A complete description is something for another thread. The creative spirit could be intertwined and related to some of these other spirits you mentioned. So perhaps morality stifles (or inspires) the creative spirit indirectly by stifling (or inspiring) these other spirits.

@Deckard,

:drinking:Actually I did not have a point. I was just tired. I was thinking about alcoholic spirits.

@prothero,

prothero;110477 wrote:

:drinking:Actually I did not have a point. I was just tired. I was thinking about alcoholic spirits.

Ha ha ha. "The author is dead" (or maybe the author has just had a few) I'd buy you another if I could. Laughing

@Deckard,

I was exposed to the early Hegel via Copleston's History of Philosophy. I think it is on googlebooks. My computer was slow at the moment so I fished out this. If you haven't read Kojeve's book, it seems to be one of the best on Hegel. It's on googlebooks. But Kojeve dwells on the Hegel who bases his system on the Desire for Recognition. Kojeve does briefly mention the old system based on love. I feel that there is much good lumber in the Black Forest known as Hegel.

Early theological writings

Hegel's early writings are significant in two ways: they already show his concern with the theme of alienation and they also show his theological orientation, an orientation which subsequently took on a philosophical form but as such remained to the end. In his earliest work, Hegel notes that, unlike ancient Greek and Roman religions, Christianity had become far removed from the everyday frame of mind, something like a lifeless additional explanation imposed from the outside on the modern mind. It also alienated the human psyche from its pursuit of beauty, freedom, and happiness. A little later, he came to see religion mainly in terms of ethics (as Kant did), before concluding that the narrowly ethical stage was transcended by Jesus' vision of love, thus restoring the alienated self of humankind.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

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