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Creativity With(out) Creator: Daoism versus Western Thought
The aim of the paper is to discuss the idea of creativity developed in Daoism comparing it with the idea of creativity developed within Western thought. Despite of the different trends within this thought, they all have at least one thing in common: creativity requires a personal Creator (or creator) – an agent, doer, author, subject of the creativity. In Daoism, from the other side, there is neither idea of God Creator nor distinguishing of an individual Self as an independent, separated entity. Unlike the substantive ontology and subject-object dichotomy, Daoism developed a processual view that interprets the reality in terms of dynamic, transformation, mutual relations, variability and openness to transformation. The paper discusses the problem of novelty in both cases as well as the role of intention and spontaneity. The “noncoercive action”, wuwei, is revealed as a kind of human creativity that requires the mastery to balance on the ever-present moment of unfolding of the ever-new flow of possibilities. This creativity means a full forgetting of the Self, relaxed alertness and oneness with the flow of transformation. The real human creativity in Western culture however also means, as already Plato shows, a special kind of Self-forgetting and turning into a pure instrument through which the divine can proceed. Is there a difference between these two states, what means to allow the divine to flow through you, what means to be an unfolding of dao, could there be creativity without creator, could there be (human) creativity with the One Creator – these are the questions that the paper seeks to answer.
Creativity With(out) Creator: Daoism versus Western Thought
The aim of the paper is to discuss the idea of creativity developed in Daoism comparing it with the idea of creativity developed within Western thought. Despite of the different trends within this thought, they all have at least one thing in common: creativity requires a personal Creator (or creator) – an agent, doer, author, subject of the creativity. In Daoism, from the other side, there is neither idea of God Creator nor distinguishing of an individual Self as an independent, separated entity. Unlike the substantive ontology and subject-object dichotomy, Daoism developed a processual view that interprets the reality in terms of dynamic, transformation, mutual relations, variability and openness to transformation. The paper discusses the problem of novelty in both cases as well as the role of intention and spontaneity. The “noncoercive action”, wuwei, is revealed as a kind of human creativity that requires the mastery to balance on the ever-present moment of unfolding of the ever-new flow of possibilities. This creativity means a full forgetting of the Self, relaxed alertness and oneness with the flow of transformation. The real human creativity in Western culture however also means, as already Plato shows, a special kind of Self-forgetting and turning into a pure instrument through which the divine can proceed. Is there a difference between these two states, what means to allow the divine to flow through you, what means to be an unfolding of dao, could there be creativity without creator, could there be (human) creativity with the One Creator – these are the questions that the paper seeks to answer.
Creativity With(out) Creator: Daoism versus Western Thought
Nikolova Antoaneta (author)
2018-06-09
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
spontaneity , wuwei spontaneity , novelty , Dao , Creativity , Daoism
DDC:
710
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