Research area

What do we mean when we call someone or something creative? And do we always mean the same? It seems that when we call a person creative, we attribute completely different characteristics to them than we do to a work that deserves this attribution. Given the obvious differences in the use of the predicate “x is creative”, it may seem hopeless to attempt to analyse the concept of creativity, because it seems prima facie doubtful whether one can truthfully speak of one concept of creativity at all.

The dissertation project attempts to address these doubts by placing the various uses of the predicate “x is creative” in an order relation, thereby distinguishing between primary and derived uses. This task raises two fundamental conceptual questions:

(i): If the predicate is applied to persons (subjects) as well as to products (artefacts, or more narrowly: works) and processes (events, or more narrowly: actions), one may ask whether these attribution possibilities can be brought into a pragmatic order of teachability. It seems promising to prioritise one of these attribution possibilities and to show that by making explanatory use of only this possibility one can successfully introduce and informatively define the other uses. A more detailed semantic analysis of this mode of use is then the most important project of a material semantics of the predicate “x is creative”: The conditions that an entity x must fulfil in order to fall under the concept of creativity (in the primary use of the predicate “x is creative”) are to be specified.

(ii): One may also ask what kind of vocabulary can be used to semantically explain the primary use of the predicate “x is creative”.

In this regard, the following is advocated and defended in the dissertation project:

(i): The primary use of the predicate “x is creative” consists in attributing it to tokens of a subtype of events: namely, actions.

(ii): Normative vocabulary is required to explain this primary use semantically.

Based on this approach, a definition of the predicate “x is creative” is formulated, drawing on vocabulary provided by Wittgenstein's later work, such as “x follows a rule” and “x is the point (Witz) of a practice”.

The dissertation was successfully completed and was defended on 18 December 2025. The dissertation and the disputation were awarded summa cum laude.