Well, with art at least they say there are basically a few main stories. Man vs self, man vs nature, man vs man etc, unrequited love etc, coming of age etc. So a lot of art is going to be examining those, and maybe telling them in terms of modern culture. This is how it should be, and people are too quick to criticize sometimes. Although there is definitely room for originality, human nature hasn't changed that much, just our understanding of it.

I think philosophy, like science, would have the goal of building on past work rather than rephrasing it.

We want credit.

Language is the means in which we organize our thoughts.

I agree with this. But I would like to add that language is the means by which humanity attains new thoughts. Language is womb of perspective. As man creates sentences, he modifies himself, for he is as made of words as he is of instincts and flesh.

Merleau-Ponty understood the same connection. For him language was a type, and probably the most important type, of perception, and persons are constructed out of perceptions.

Right, a new sentences would be new perceptions = new humanity. If you add our technological progress with the extension of our language, you have different beings (subjectively, existentially speaking) than before. They think different. They live in a different environment.

The less restrictions you place on words, the easier it is for meaning to flow through them.

In a sense: perceptions=existence=being=understanding=essence.

I'm not sure what you mean by the first statement. What sort of restrictions?

But I also would like to keep the thread from getting too far away from the anxiety of influence.

To phrase it another way, the creator (writers, musicians, visual artists, etc.) does not want to see or feel themselves to be a second-rate imitation. The anxiety of influence is an emotion that pushes the entire game toward novelty. New movements in painting, for example. Innovation is driven to some degree by the anxiety of influence. (The market also seems to have an appetite for novelty, which is no surprise.)

It ties into anxiety and influence, as it follows Heidegger's attempts to anti-reify language.

The majority of learning today takes place through a form of reification of words. People learn a word, and then they create an image, or a "thing", that corresponds with the word, thinking that it will help them remember it. Now, when people first learn a word, they don't always have a meaningful concept to tie into it, so many times their pre-constructed image of the word remains despite a lack of practical meaning associated with the word.

This creates problems, anxiety, for people when they are introduced to a meaning that doesn't correspond their image. They are unable to change their concrete image of the world, thus become reluctant to accept anyone else's opinion. Restricting the meaning of their own language.

What Heidegger suggests, is that we must break down those walls created by turning words into concrete things. By un-reifying language, you allow for meaning to flow through words naturally, as they were intended to do.

Our creativeness comes from our ability to allow for meaning to flow through us, not by us controlling anything.

Sadly, most hold on to these pre-conceived reified images of words their whole life, so they are never able to truly understand meaning.

Thanks for elaboration. Here's a sample of the anxiety I was hoping to focus on.

Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintained with precursor poets. While admitting the influence of extraliterary experience on every poet, he argues that "the poet in a poet" is inspired to write by reading another poet's poetry and will tend to produce work that is derivative of existing poetry, and, therefore, weak. Because a poet must forge an original poetic vision in order to guarantee his survival into posterity (i.e., to guarantee that future readers will not allow him to be forgotten), the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets.

Don't you see the connection.

A poets weapon is his words. However, if a poet discovers that his weapon is no better than any other weapon, then anxiety may overcome him.

A poet that does this, fails to recognize the flow of meaning through language. No one can attempt to yield a tyrannical rule over words, as our language exists as a means to share meaning, not to claim it.

We tend to make up our own constructs associated with words, thus restricting actual meaning to flow through them.

We do not speak meaning into our words, words are vehicles for meaning to flow through us.

I agree: no one can rule language. It develops organically between people who live together. Yes, to indulge oneself by making up one's own meaning for words is counter-productive. The words are legos, atoms, bricks. One can invent new meaning by using sentence and paragraphs, by snapping these legos together.

For instance, before Heidegger wrote Being and Time, where were those ideas? Yes, he had his influences. But did he or did he not invent new meaning, new perspective? Or we can go back farther, all the way to Plato. He, too, obviously had his influences. But was the sum greater than the parts? Were some of his parts new?

Pretend it's your ambition to be a great writer. Who knows? Maybe that's your ambition already. How does one achieve this? A graceful paraphrase is valuable, yes, but the greatness is more associated with originality than the graceful paraphrase of unoriginal ideas. To play in the big leagues and earn the respect of those with taste and exposure is no small task.

Do we not want to see ourselves as original? Are not most of our best thoughts taken from others? How has this affected philosophy? How does this effect the positions we take on this forum? I got this phrase from Harold Bloom, but I've experienced the anxiety of influence for a long long time. I think it pushes us toward innovation.

Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintained with precursor poets. While admitting the influence of extraliterary experience on every poet, he argues that "the poet in a poet" is inspired to write by reading another poet's poetry and will tend to produce work that is derivative of existing poetry, and, therefore, weak. Because a poet must forge an original poetic vision in order to guarantee his survival into posterity (i.e., to guarantee that future readers will not allow him to be forgotten), the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets.
Thus Bloom attempts to work out the process by which the small minority of 'strong' poets manage to create original work in spite of the pressure of influence.

Meaning cannot be created, it already exists. It is often mis-attributed as creativity due to people's tendency towards individualism.

That is why Plato believed that all knowledge is already known, we have just forgotten it, and we are currently in the process of remembering it.

I also have the anxiety of influence. I happen to be very influential in philosophical circles, and this makes me very anxious. All that responsibility. I find it hard to handle.

It doesn't make sense that all knowledge is both known and yet (until remembered) forgotten. Perhaps you have unconsidered motives for attacking the possibility of creation. No affront intended. It's something I come across sometimes, a certain resentment toward the ambition to create.
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I did come across a bit fatalistic there. Not my intentions.

When I said meaning is not created, I meant more that meaning is already there to be discovered. I didn't mean to downplay creativity. I just don't think attributing creativity solely to an individual is appropriate.

Rather than thinking ourselves of creating meaning, I think we should think of creation as a form of discovery of meaning. I think that is where Plato was going. The sense of accomplishment that comes from creating is well deserved, as you discovered it, but you discovered something that was already there. What was once potential was actualized by you.

The reward that comes from the creativity shouldn't, and really isn't, the motivation for creating. People create because of that feeling of discovery. The reward is an afterthought.

The act of claiming land comes to mind. Columbus felt a sense of accomplishment by "discovering" the Americas. He attributed the creation of a whole hemisphere to himself, although it was already there waiting to be discovered.

I respect what you are saying, but I can't agree. Imagine Nabokov, famous already for writing Lolita. He's a writer. What is he going to write next? That's an important question for him. A novel is a web of meaning that is quite unique, taken in its totality. It's hard to imagine a novel as recollection.

Another argument against meaning as recollection is the difference between cultures. They conceive of the world differently, as if they created their interpretations differently.

I think the discovery of land is a deceptive analogy.

I do agree that attributing creation solely to the individual is a mistake. Indeed, the individual creates from the tools at hand. We are all immersed in the world. But this is where the anxiety of influence comes from. The creator is afraid that he is all influence, and no originality. The creator is afraid of not really being a creator, but only a transmitter, a paraphrase.

Thanks for engaging this issue.