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Man's unceasing interest and talent in art is attested by archeological and anthropological records dating back to paleolithic times. Today, wherever we turn, wherever we travel, the products of these talents are in clear evidence.
The meaning and origin of man's creative talents have interested philosophers of all ages. Few are the humanists who have not attempted to reveal the secrets of artistic creativity and to categorize the “laws of beauty.” (1) Some of them explain creativity as originating in magic, in Divine inspiration, or in a form of madness. Others explain it as reflecting a spiritual quality of life or the beauty of nature. Still others conceive of it as serving the purpose of katharsis—as a release for inner tension—or as a need to express human emotions.
All these theories no doubt offer some partial explanation of creativity. None, however, completely illuminates the meaning or origin of the creative process. Upon critically examining each of them we eventually come face to face with an unanswerable, with an assumption, with some form of a priori, hypothetical reasoning. What, for example, is the ultimate meaning of magic, or Divine inspiration? How are the tensions, which find release by way of katharsis, to be explained by these early speculations? What is the nature of “beauty” which forms the basis of so many theories of artistic creativity?