Relevant Philosophy

I had an interesting conversation with Steve Schlow about the other end of the creativity debate, which lies in philosophy. He introduced me to the concept of the "Aesthetic Transaction" as described by Friedrich Schiller in his essays "On the Aesthetic Education of Man." His ideas were informed by Kant's idea that "a man of feeling" has a divine impulse to create. In his "Critique of Judgement" Kant wrote "when you sit down to do a thing, the thing becomes you... you yield to the thing." Anyway, this aesthetic transaction, according to Schiller, is not necessarily knowable, but can be observed. The transaction itself drives the artist and its byproduct is the work of art. Because film is a collaborative art within an industrial system, room for the aesthetic transaction is very narrow. I'm not exactly sure how this relates to our study but I find the philsophical notion of all of this fascinating. I've got Schiller's book on reserve in the library. I've also reserved Theresa Amabile's book The Social Psychology of Creativity as recommended by Steve. Apparently he knows her and has spoken with her about this while working for Disney.