Abstract

What I hope to do in this paper is to sort out three basic senses of the word ‘creativity’ in order to make clear why creativity is not a basic category in Hegel’s philosophy. When it is read as a systematic philosophy, Hegel’s philosophy runs counter to nearly every current usage of the word ‘creativity,’ whether it be theological, common sensical, artistic or scientifically empirical. Which is not to say that creativity has no place in his philosophy. But, whereas Jewish and Christian theology, modern art, modern common sense and empirical science take creativity to be of fundamental significance, Hegel - as Professor Schmitz’s paper shows - “weakens” the theological, epistemological and aesthetic doctrines of creativity to an argument concerning the necessity of contingency presented in his Science of Logic.