Freedom and creativity in the Humanities. Maxime Rovere's conference at Princeton.

Maxime Rovere, invited by prof. David Bellos as as a Eberhard L. Faber Short-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and Department of French and Italian, theorizes creativity in the humanities. He writes : "What kind of creativity is involved in the interpretation of a text? What does this word mean, "creativity", when it comes to making a commentary? From Lovejoy to Garber via Colinwood, Skinner and Henrich, the great theoreticians of intellectual history approach this problem by questioning the relationship between past and present. From this point of view, philosophical interpretation has an analogy with translation, since it is assumed that it consists of transferring a content from one codified system to another. Drawing from the theory of complexity and from David Bellos’ analysis of translation options (source / target), I argue that it is possible to conceive a retroactive form of reflexivity, capable of overcoming the opposition between realism and constructivism, fidelity and appropriation, etc."

Philosophy,Epistomology,Rovere,Humanities,Translation,Creativity,