The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity

Philosophy has long paid minimal attention to creativity, and even with the rise of research on imagination, the creative imagination has still largely been ignored. The aim of this Oxford Handbook is to correct this neglect. By bringing together research from various sub-disciplines, the contributors explore recent emerging topics and open up new avenues of research in the philosophy of imagination and creativity.

The 37 chapters provide state of the art treatments of a variety of subjects at the intersection of imagination and creativity. The volume opens with a comprehensive editors' introduction providing an overview of issues covered in the volume. The chapters in Part I provides framing and historical context for the philosophical study of imagination and creativity, along with an overview of the empirical literature. The chapters in Part II explores imagination and creativity as they manifest in, and in turn shape, the individual. The chapters in Part III survey the role of imagination and creativity across a wide variety of artistic domains, and the chapters in Part IV turn to societal domains. Part V focuses on the interplay of imagination and creativity with regard to the variety and features of creative subjects.

The handbook will be of great interest to scholars and students wishing to learn about imagination and creativity across a wide philosophical terrain: from the philosophy of mind and cognitive science to ethics and political philosophy, to aesthetics and philosophy of art, to epistemology and philosophy of science. The volume will be useful not only to established scholars but to those coming to these topics for the first time.