In Our Time - Originality

Episode Date: March 20, 2003

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the creative force of originality. How far is it to do with origins, how far with the combination of the discoveries of others, which were themselves based on the thoughts of others, into an ever-receding and replicating past? Is invention original? Is original important? Is tradition more interesting and the reworking of what is traditional of greater value than the search for idiosyncrasy? And did our notion of the original genius come as much out of a commercial imperative for individual copyright in the eighteenth century, as a romantic view of human nature which came in, perhaps not co-incidentally, at the same time? In 1800, in his preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth wrote "Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished". But did the notion of originality begin with the Romantics in the 18th century, or has society always valued originality? Should we consider Shakespeare an innovator or a plagiarist?To what extent is originality about perception rather than conception and is originality a concept without meaning today?With John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music at King’s College London; Jonathan Rée, philosopher and author of Philosophical Tales; Professor Catherine Belsey, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, Wordsworth wrote in 1800 in his preface to the liturgical ballads. Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

But did the notion of originality begin with the romantic, in the 18th century. Society has not always valued originality. Should we consider even Shakespeare as an original or a plagiarist? To what extent is originality about perception rather than conception? And is originality a concept without meaning today? With me to discuss this is Professor Catherine Belsie, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University, Jonathan Ray, philosopher and author, and John Deithridge, Professor of Music at King's College London. John Dastricht, what exactly do you mean by originality? Well, I think today people think of originality in two ways, positive and negative.

I think people like the idea of newness, people being original. On the other hand, they're rather suspicious of irrational newness. And I think people prefer the idea of originality something new or someone who's producing something new inside a tradition without realizing that those two things are rather contradictory. because you can't have a tradition without people stealing from everybody else and sharing a language, which is why I think this rather clever definition by Voltaire is quite good, which is that originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

I think that sums it up. Was the notion, not necessarily the word, but was the notion of originality one that would have meant something to the Greeks? We so often go back to Greeks. I don't see why we should break that tradition this morning. Would it have meant anything to Plato, for instance? It wouldn't have meant the same thing it means to us, obviously, but I can't imagine that people didn't recognize Plato

to be an extremely original thinker and just an original person. Even the way he put his sandals on in the morning was probably quite original. You get very original people. In the Middle Ages, I can't imagine that patrons didn't recognize Dure, for example, as a highly original artist. I think we're talking about the day. difference between people in a very closed circle and how that's perceived in a rather wider circle. And I think you have to be very careful how to define that.

But the idea of somebody doing something and being original, we would say idiosyncratic, novel, almost freakish, of their own, which will come to later in this discussion. Was that prevalent at the time? Let's stick with the Greeks for one more take. I honestly don't know. I think it's very difficult to prove. And in the Middle Ages, is there more proof there? I think there's a difference there. In the Middle Ages, I think people were into ownership. I mean, Dura was into ownership to take a good example.

He didn't like people using his sign. He put his sign on his illustrations. But what's interesting is he didn't feel he had ownership over his style. So someone could imitate him, and he didn't mind. It's the same in music. You could imitate someone in music and no one would mind. But you would like to claim ownership of certain. ideas or certain pieces. I mean, Handel, for example, borrowed, talking about the 18th century,

borrowed hugely. And borrowing really means kleptomania. You always find an entry for borrowing in a music dictionary. It really means kleptomania. And nobody thought anything of it. I don't get the 18th century yet. Jonathan Ray, can you talk about what we always think, or that generally thought, that in the Renaissance, the individual came through, the great individual artists, Chalini's autobiography and so and so forth. Is that true? Would they be thinking of themselves as original in the way in which we now like the individual, original, even genius word? Well, I think that when we now think about the idea of originality, we're probably thinking in a terribly confused way, and that confusion has a history. I mean, if you think of what

the word originally means, if you think of the root meaning of the word, something's original if it's acting according to nature, according to how it innately is. And so you could say, you know, what you'd expect originality to mean is the opposite of eccentricity, individuality and freakishness. I mean, to act originally is to act according to your nature. And certainly according to Greek philosophy, our natures are all the same. So when we all act originally, we're all going to act in a completely uniform kind of way. You look us back to Plato at the beginning.

And there are two reference points in Plato that would be worth bringing in here. One is his exclusion of the poets from the ideal city. Poets are excluded because they are so eccentric in their representation of reality that they're far removed from the truth. On the other hand, there's the story of the slave boy in the Meno, who through a series of questions is revealed as having a knowledge of eternal truths about mathematics. I mean, he proves Pythagoras theorem about triangles. And that shows that even an uneducated slave boy has original knowledge of geometry born inside him.

And I think that tension between originality meaning individuality and originality meaning according to nature is one that, well, there's no single name for it in Plato. I think it does become a tension in the Renaissance where the value that's placed on poets from the 14. century onwards from Petrarch onwards, although they think of themselves as reviving classical culture, in fact, the prestige that's given to the poet and to the eccentricity of the poet is, I think, something new. So perhaps the prestige given to the individual, which begins to take it away from its original, natural meaning? Well, I think what eventually happens, I think probably not till the 18th century, is

what enables the concept of originality to swivel to the weather. 180 degrees so that it no longer means the normal and the common, but means the abnormal and the extraordinary, is the concept of genius. At 1759, there's a book by Edward Young, the great graveyard poet, about the idea of original composition. And he says, well, originality is those works, especially the works of Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Milton. Shakespeare and Homer are the great originals. And he says, originality is a vegetable quality. It's something that grows by nature,

but it grows only in those few spirits who have within them, if you like, whose soil is genius. So there are a few individuals whose nature is such that when they behave according to their nature, they produce something that's extraordinary. That's how the idea of the natural and the idea of the extraordinary get bridged.

It's through this 18th century, idea of genius. I'm still trying to rein you all back a little bit from the 18th century, but still. Catherine Belzee, first of all, what would your view of the word and the meaning of originality be? I think when we use it now, we probably have in mind not just the kind of inventiveness that John was talking about, the newness, the novelty, the difference, but also the idea that's implicit in what Jonathan was saying, that it comes out of the self. So I was interested that in your introduction you juxtaposed on the one hand originality and on the other hand plagiarism as if there's something that comes

out of you or there's something that comes from somewhere else. And I think probably that's the idea that we could relativise, we could historicize. And I would guess that if you went back before the 18th century, you would find that you could have the inventiveness without any notion that that inventiveness had to come out of you as an individual, out of something special in you. Well, let's go back to the biggest, in our particular culture,

a figure we can possibly meet before the end of session, which be Shakespeare. Would he have been thought of as original in his day? And would it have mattered to, to have been thought of as original? I would think not. Well, two questions. Sorry, I shouldn't have asked two,

but which are you saying I would think not? He wouldn't have been thought of or he wouldn't have mattered to. Both. Both, right. Both. I would think not. I would think it simply wasn't a value in the period. and we, of course, know very little about Shakespeare's own thoughts.

There are few authors... Except we know everything about his thoughts. We know everything about his written words, but the difficulty is to know anything about his biography. And in that sense, I don't know, but it seems to me from what I know of the culture, that it simply wasn't a value and wouldn't have mattered to anybody. Now, that doesn't mean that Shakespeare isn't hugely inventive

in all sorts of ways that we could talk about, if you want, Well, that's part of the job this morning, Catherine. That's what we're here for. So how would inventive be regarded then? Is that just another word for what later became the word original? As far as we can tell, Shakespeare's main project was to make a fast buck. I mean, it was to pack the globe with spectators and make money out of it. That's a bit reductive, but it's your argument, so why are you going? Well, it's fairly consensual in Shakespeare studies at the moment, and I wouldn't. claim any originality. I wouldn't claim any originality but I still get the right to object.

So as far as his own project was concerned, I guess originality probably didn't come into it. But we looking back with the notion of originality might well want to attribute it to him because he did such extraordinary things. For example,

we take for granted that at least I mean it's easy to take for granted that there's always been the kind of romantic comedy you get in four weddings and a funeral. or going back 100 years in the importance of being earnest. But actually Shakespeare invented this. But he didn't invent it out of his innermost feelings or thoughts.

He invented it by putting together things that were already lying around in the culture that nobody had thought of putting together before. So I would guess we've always had inventiveness. Can you just elaborate a little bit more so people know what's going from Terence and what's going from elsewhere? Yes. I think you could argue that Shakespeare took the structure of Roman comedy. In Roman comedy, there would be a young couple who wanted to get married and an old father who stopped them,

and I'm just caricaturing in a way because they're not all quite as identical as this, but that was the general pattern. There would be every kind of obstacle, and the play would not be interested in the love story of the couple. This would just be a peg on which you'd hang all kinds of social satire and intrigue of various kinds. and Shakespeare took the couple and put them centre stage and made the psychology of romantic love,

the important and interesting thing in As You Like It or Twelfth Night, and drew on medieval love stories in order to do that, and Elizabethan love poetry derived ultimately, I suppose, from Petrach. So he put at least these three traditions together and made something brand new. Would you consider that then? on to me original. You know, I have a feeling that we're talking about a historical fantasy here.

I'm just wondering whether originality really exists because talking about it in a rather anxious way probably means that we don't think it exists anymore. I mean, the text you quoted from the 18th century, Jonathan, by Young, that's always now repeated about the genius individuality. but I think coming today, you can see all these constructions of what originality is or isn't. And I just asked myself whether it actually exists or whether it's a fantasy that's fulfilling some kind of need that we need to think about now, perhaps with the feeling that everything's being said when our culture's coming to an end.

Well, that's going a long way ahead of where I'd like to be with respect. I mean, if you're saying everything we say about then is coloured by the way we think now, that's obviously true. but it's still, I think, worth pinning down how he got to now and the idea of, and taking Shakespeare and taking it on. I mean, when did the nature of Shakespeare's writing become to be thought of as original and that of a genius? And what did that mean, Jonathan? I think it can be dated to the middle of the 18th century pretty precisely.

And it's true that we know very little about Shakespeare's biography. In spite of the enormous Shakespeare industry, there are massive gaps in people's knowledge about his education and the extent of his knowledge of Latin and so on. But that was a huge advantage from the point of view of the 18th century Shakespeare industry who produced this idea of the great British genius, Our Homer, who was a genius in the sense that he produced stuff out of from within himself that had no precedent.

He was like a magician, that's what they said. Other people have to build things slowly and methodically, but a genius is someone who produces stuff. out of thinner. And the fact that no one knew what Shakespeare had read made it very much easier for people like young, people, the inventors of the Shakespeare industry,

to say that actually Shakespeare read nothing. And if he had read anything, then that would have stifled his genius, which, I mean, is a complete... But what you're saying is, because we don't know really anything about Shakespeare, that in the 18th century, they're creating this fantasy about him,

which is why they can forge him so easily, and which is why they can sort of just simply invent things, as you say about it. I mean, this is also the century inevitable to come back to it where composers like Handel, for example, are not caring a jot about originality and borrowing from Tellman, you can buy books now, call Handles borrowing. It's hugely contradictory,

which suggests to me that the thing is really an empty space. Yeah, but it's very interesting. You mentioned that, I'll come to you in a second, Catherine, because the handle is a wonderful example. on. You've talked about it before because on the one hand is a great borrower and you yourself think that Shakespeare did lots of borrowings. Yes. And Monteverdi certainly did lots of borrowings. It's harder to prove

with Shakespeare's case. And so on, but he handled as lots of borrowings, including from himself and including one rather... Famous example from Messiah. But then he's also the first individual musician to be given a statue in Westminster Abbey and therefore he is the individual artist. So he's,

if we can use the word cusp without recrimination, something there, isn't there? Yes, there is something there. about Handel means that you have to obliterate most of his works for a start because there's one work, Messiah, that becomes central to that fantasy. By 1784 people had already forgotten about most of the other oratorias. There were all sorts of other things that were built around Handel, which didn't actually correspond to what he actually did. And it was only when we got to the 19th century where people got more skeptical about Handel because of this cult of originality that they started accusing him of doing all this boring. Catherine. I just wanted to interpose, just to say that cultural history is so complicated. I would stand by everything we've all said, but the fact is that in Shakespeare, there are already glimmerings of an alternative. There are beginnings of what I would think of as the excuse, at least, for this idea of originality.

The folio of his plays was published after his death in 1623, as you know, And it has, as its front is piece, an engraving of Shakespeare, a close-up of Shakespeare's face, just like putting the face of the author on the jacket now. And when we see that on the jacket now, we think here is the origin of this work. Well, in the same way, I think that the folio publication, this is a brand new idea to put the author's picture there.

And I think that does begin to point forward to the 18th century world that we're all agreeing is the moment when this idea really takes off. John, can you tell us what impact Rousseau's ideas had on this notion of originality? Oh, I think Rousseau is very important. Rousseau is very contradictory, though. I think on the one hand he wants to go back to origins and suggest in his theory of music

that it's recreating an origins of language and therefore language has arisen through a kind of deconstruction of it, i.e. that it's got more decadent over the years and got less original. So therefore, music in particular, can restore that. On the other hand, he wants to put a very tendentious historical agenda in his dictionary of music, for example, which suggests that the history of music has come to an end

with the composer Ramo because he's too full of harmony and that the new music from the Italians full of melody is what is going to be the music of the future. So on the one hand, he's talking about the deconstruction of originality over the centuries and the other hand he's saying, well, the future depends on the originality of melody coming from the Italians. Jonathan Roy. Well, I think that Rousseau illustrates what a paradoxical concept originality. As John said earlier, that he thought that originality was such a fantasy concept,

that it was really not a reality at all. I disagree with that. I think it is a complete fantasy, but it also had a reality. I mean, that's to say it had real positive effects. That's to say, people sought to be geniuses and sought to construct other people's lives as the lives of geniuses. Even if we think that the idea of genius is stupid,

that doesn't prevent it from having effects. And I think Rousseau, you could say, was a kind of victim of this contradiction. On the one hand, he sought to live the life of a person whose nature was unique, of a genius. But on the other hand, his critique of modern society was a critique of the desire

to distinguish yourself from other people, which I think he pointed out with tremendous acuteness that you might think that the desire to distinguish yourself from other people was a way of exploring your sincere individuality. I think the great paradox that Rousseau saw into was it actually distinguishing yourself from other people was like a kind of higher conformism

because you were constantly looking over your shoulder at other people in order to, as it were, find a gap in the market where you could place your product and distinguish it from other people. So that I think he knew that originality, I mean, that kind of, that pursuit of distinction was very far from being the pursuit of genuine spontaneity. Catherine, excuse me, sorry,

Catherine Balsy, is there any sense in which this Rousseau's ideas explained by John and Jonathan? can be associated with concepts of the free market and competition that were coming up at that time and the loosening up in the economic sphere which could be called leading to an individuation of the notion of who did what and particular persons did things instead of moving through inherited land and inherited jobs and inherited structures of nature. It's enormously tempting to make huge and reductive suggestions about this, but I do think there's an interesting coincidence

that at the very moment when romanticism is promoting the special and gifted individual, at the same time the economy has changed from an economy based on land to one based on commodities. And when land is the issue and inheritance is what's stake, if you're the Duke of Northumberland or whatever, your real project is to inherit from your father the land and to keep it as best you can to pass it on to the next general. generation and your individual character doesn't matter very much. But once we're in a world of entrepreneurs who make a profit precisely by having a unique idea, by having a special

take on things or a special way of selling things, then the specially gifted individual is singled out and is going to be successful and important. Now, I wouldn't want to make that causal, but I do think it's interesting that the two things. happen at roughly the same time. I think you could be more specific than that. I mean, it's not just a matter of the individual entrepreneur, it's the individual holder of copyright, and it is precisely

at the time when people start talking about genius, that the legal system starts recognising copyright. I mean, that's to say writers having, and there already existed the possibility of patenting your work if you were an inventor. I mean, the king could give you a patent saying that it was your invention.

But it is an 18th century legal innovation to say that, to say that your words can only be printed with your permission and with payment. There were some court cases in Dürer's time about ownership of his signature, you know, the AD, that very distinctive thing. People tried to steal that and, you know, there were ownership. Copyright issues then. I think what's different then,

and also with this image of Shakespeare that you mentioned going on, the failure of King Neer, whatever it is, That's about ownership of something. It's not necessarily about originality. I don't think Shakespeare would have minded if someone found out that half his plays were written by someone else on a workshop principle, but he would have minded if someone claimed that it was all by Shakespeare. And I think that's actually rather a difference.

And I don't think necessarily this issue of copyright and ownership goes together with the rise of markets necessarily. I think it was there much earlier and has to do also with the reproduction and publication of works of art. Can I go back to the quotation I used at the beginning of the programme from Wordsworth, every great and original writer in proportion as he is great and original?

So the word is bang in the middle of the romantic project in this country sent Wordsworth, Coleridge, Coleridge developed Shakespearean studies massively. There we are. Now, why did it come in so firmly at that time Why were they so convinced that this was at the heart of changing the nature of the way that they perceived the world through their poetry? Well, I think it has to do with the rise of science. I think artists found themselves in rival with science to be new, to discover the thing first, to get there first. The whole thing, you know, we hear with this celebration of DNA today is all about originality.

I think artists want to do the same, wanted to do the same then in the 19th century. And I agree with Jonathan that originality does exist. but I think it only exists when people are self-consciously wanting to be original. I think that's part of the fantasy. And in the 19th century, it becomes extremely important to be ahead of the game in music to create a new chord or a new form or even a new genre, and also to justify that historically. But that is because artists want to rival the thing that they think is the thing that they think is most dangerous,

which is science, industrialisation, the progress of... All this new stuff. Of all this new stuff which they don't like. Yes. Are they fearful of? Do you agree with that relationship, John Hill? What relationship? Well, the relationship between the artists and science,

a competitive relationship that John was outlining now. Well, I'm not sure that it was... It's simply that John was rather anachronistically projecting a kind of science envy on the romantic poets, which I don't think would be quite true. Because I don't think that science for them had the prestige that made them envious. I mean, I think in a way what John's saying is a description of a 20th century situation, where I think it's certainly true that the art industry would like to imitate the research industry.

But I think you want to come on to that later. Yes, well, what do you make of the way that words were so emphatically used the word original when he did? Well, I'm not even sure that you should put as much weight on it as you're inclined to do. I mean, it seems to me that when he talks about original, I'm not sure that he means brand new. I think he's just as much talking about natural and, you know, using the ordinary language. Yes, you use, and the originals,

I mean, this idea of the original genius, when people talked about it in connection with Shakespeare, it was partly that he was not a classic, you know, that his references were, you know, he talked about King Lear, to some extent, you know, he was a normal. than genius, not a southern, southern genius. And I think this north-south difference is very important

to the understanding of originality. I would think that what distinguishes Wordsworth and Coleridge from what they share with Plato is the idea that the special thing comes out of the individual, comes out of the self. And they're absolutely clear about that, and they repeat it over and over again. What distinguishes them, though, from Plato, I would think, is that they see themselves as special.

They don't see this innate thing as shared. They see it as, Wethwith talks about poetry being produced by a person of more than usual organic sensibility. That's the poet. But what's interesting in relation to what Jonathan was saying about Rousseau and the paradoxes of originality is that all their poetry in a way can be seen as about this very thing, about what comes out of the self and the vision that's special for the gifted person. A great example of that. Yes, but you can find it in Coleridge as well, in dejection and so on.

But all of it is the poetry of loss. All of it is the poetry of disappointment. What they're recording is the fact that they're losing this vision. They can't capture the special thing that would make them unique and would allow them to originate the great verse that they hoped. Of course they do originate great verse, but it's not the verse they set up to. I think that's very true. coming back to my fantasy about science in the 19th century,

I think what you're saying about self is also the very aspect of this that artists felt they were superior to the inventors of the railway or someone like Darwin who wants to publish the origin of species before someone else publishes the same idea, or even Karl Marx with his idea of political capital. They can always talk about the inner empire. I've heard that used in Germany quite a lot. that's inner reich, whereas scientists are also into originality,

but it remains external and has much more this sense of vacuousness as opposed to what we, the artists, can do originally from ourselves. I think this is actually quite an important part of what I call the fantasy of originality. Certainly keeps had it in for Newton because Newton had destroyed their world of vision and nature and excitement and put mathematics in its place. On the other hand, thought that painting was a branch of science, so we had the... Yes, you get, and also institutionally, you get concerts of enormous performances of handle, you know, with thousands of performers in the Crystal Palace,

which is, you know, the symbol of the Industrial Revolution, where these two things actually come together. But from a creative point of view in the 19th century, I think that Crystal Palace situation presents one of the great rivalries in 19th century culture. Jonathan, do you think that what Hegel said about his notions of history and the historical process, do you think that threw light on the notion of originality, the idea of the genius, the idea of the individual? Yes, and I think that one of the paradoxes about romantic poetry that we were just talking about is that there is this quest for individuality, but it's also a quest for the past.

The quest for the interior is also the quest for the anterior. It's a harking after some supposedly lost age of purity. In other words, it's not very future-oriented. It's more past-oriented. I think that it's very important to remember that philosophically and perhaps chronologically as well, Hegel and Wordsworth are contemporaries. Hegel defined himself as an anti-romantic

which is kind of curious because you might think of him as a romantic philosopher in the sense that he has very grand visions about how everything fits together into a single hole which you might say is the characteristic romantic notion. I suppose the conclusion you might want to draw from that is that it would be a good idea to put an embargo on the word romanticism altogether

although I think this programme might have difficulty proceeding. We tried to embargo. I had a close shave earlier on when you try to embugging originality. Anyway, Hegel's dislike of the notion of romantic originality was that it made it sound as though human creativity was unhistoric. And his idea was that at the very moment when artists of his own generation and an earlier generation

had imagined that they were inventing stuff from nothing, at that moment they were proving themselves really to be the children of tradition. And that, in other words, that the concept of originality is just a slight misrecognition of the way in which, in fact, we have no choice about it.

We are all creatures of tradition. Yes, it has been said that Hegel is responsible for the dethroning of the self. That's a marvelous phrase. But I think it's very paradoxical with Hegel, who is an anti-romantic in the sense that he wants to create systems,

and he wants to put history above the self. But on the other hand, his idea of thinking leads also among artists in Germany to the idea that history can only be made by certain special individuals who count historically. That is to say you can write symphonies or write poetry and some of it can even be original but only certain pieces of music

and certain pieces of poetry or plays will count historically, if you accept that art has a future at all, which Hale was actually rather doubtful about. Catherine, can I come to the beginning of the 20th century now with T.S. Eliot's tradition and the individual talent? What is he saying about this notion that we've been discussing this morning? It's an extraordinarily radical essay. I don't always find myself hugely in sympathy with T.S. Eliot, but in this case, it's a brilliant piece of writing. It's very short. And it just argues that you can't write anything that's going to be of any interest to anyone unless you're absolutely steeped in the tradition.

And you won't, of course, reproduce the tradition if you're adequately steeped in it because you exist at a different moment and in a different context. And you will, by that means, write something which modifies the tradition. So the tradition is always changing in the sense that every new contribution to it

rearranges it in the minds of people who come after. One or three of you used the example of Mendelssohn and Goethe, that he's played a lot of classical music history of with his own at the end. And Goethe said, oh, you've changed the way I think about all the past stuff. Yes, we haven't mentioned it. We were talking about it before the programme began, yes. It's a very interesting moment in the 1820s where Goethe invites the very young Mendelssohn to enlighten him about music

that he doesn't really like Beethoven, for example. It's always kind of cheering up when great figures don't like other great figure. I don't know why. It's a kind of moment of subversive. But what happens, Mendelso, it's very clever. And he basically says to Gertr, look, I'm going to play all this music, some of which you like and some of which you don't, but I'm going to play it to you in chronological order.

I'm going to start with Handel and with Bach, then I'm going to move through Mozart and Haydn, and then I'm going to get on to Beethoven. and then perhaps a little bit of myself. And Goethe writes to his friend Selta, saying, well, at last I understand music. It makes sense, this idea of historical order and technical progress. When you come in on that then, Jonathan,

in terms of what Catherine said, as an example given by John, this idea of tradition and individual talent, you think that is closing towards where we nowadays think of, what we nowadays think of the place of originality? Well, I think it's where we ought to be thinking of originality. I'm not sure we do well enough. I mean, I think that the brilliant, I think Catherine's quite right.

It's a brilliant essay, this essay of T.S. Eliot's because it takes apart the idea of tradition as being a dead weight, which the so-called original artist is under an obligation to overthrow. I mean, his point, it is really a Hegelian point that if we have to use the word original, then the original person is not the person who breaks with tradition, but the person who brings tradition back to life again. who reanimates tradition, makes it new, rather than someone who breaks from it. And how did Heidegger add to this with his work and the origins of the work of art?

The origins of the work of art, it's extraordinary. It's a work of art in itself, really. It's dating from 1935 originally. It makes great play of the paradoxes in the idea of originality. It says, you know, everybody thinks that art's supposed to be original and the artist is supposed to be original. and he sort of makes jokes about how the idea of originality seems to point to the individuality of the creator. And then he works out that actually that doesn't make sense at all,

that the only originality that really works is the originality that belongs to art. He makes great play of the idea of the work of art. originality lies in the working of a work of art, not in the labour of an artist. And the labour of an artist is useful only if it enables a work of art to work. That's always a historical event. Well, he also connects it with the idea of truth.

He says truth is not something that just exists. Truth is something that happens. And when an artwork works as a work of art, then it is making truth happen. And that's not a matter of an artist suddenly having an insight. It's a matter of a historical event in which a work of art works, and that's not just a matter to do with the brilliance of the artist.

It's also a matter to do with the receptivity of, what he says, the preservers, those who are capable of appreciating, the appreciators of the work of art. In other words, the originality, in a way he's against the idea of originality, but he says, okay, let's take the idea of originality seriously. And then we see that originality is nothing to do with individual creativity. it's to do with the historicity of truth, if you like. In other words, it becomes something very mysterious.

He takes something that appears to be obvious and shows that it's not obvious at all. Can I just ask Catherine, John, for you? Would you like to comment on that? I'm interested. It's all news to me. Hidego is not anything I know about it. But I'm absolutely thrilled to discover the...

I was going to say origins, but I'm not sure that... I dare use the word, after all we've said. The origins of some of the ideas that have been around since, in the kind of theory that I work with. Roland Bart's famous essay, The Death of the Author, for example,

or Leotard, very much, Jean-François Leotardt very much takes up this idea of the work of art as an event. And what Bart is saying is it's something that's put together. He's not really, of course, saying the author is dead. This is a 1968 manifesto. He's saying authors write things, but they write things out of the available material

and what's produced is happening. And important, and inventive happening. But I think maybe we want to switch words. We want to stop using this word originality, not in the programme, of course, but immediately afterwards. At 945, I think we should ban the word.

I bet you talk about nothing else. You'll be dogged by it for days. Because it seems to me it is misleading in the sense that it does imply that the origin is somewhere mysterious. Do we feel we're misled, if Catherine's right, John, as we're coming to the...

end of this program. Do you think we're misled because we are confused about the idea of originality now, or do you think we're in a period where we're rejecting the 18th and 19th century, in early 20th century ideas of originality? I think all of those things. To continue on the hiding example, who by the way is a philosopher, I can't stand

because he's a philosopher of nostalgia. I mean, he wants this identity between cultural object and community. Again, it comes from the 18th century really, this idea of haireders that the folk and art and so forth are all one identity. And I think that nostalgia still plays a role in the way we think about originality now.

The other view that, which I think is a healthier view, is what I might say call the avant-garde view, which is to put a bed, you know, as a work of art, which actually... An unmade bed. A non-made bed. I beg your pardon, which questions the whole notion of originality and the history and philosophy associated with it. I think that's rather healthy.

I'll take John outside afterwards and get him to speak more, speak more respectfully about Heidegger. I think that we're making a mistake if we think that originality is particularly about poetry and art. And in fact, it is part of, above all, it's part of the research culture of the sciences. I mean, it's the place where people, where the concept of originality is most operative and influential now

is in the idea that every scientific research result has to be original in the sense that it differs from everything else that's available. And this has spread from the sciences to all other university kinds of knowledge. I mean, even English literature research, as it's called, is now organized in such a way that everybody has to produce pieces of research that are original in the sense that they can be compared with everybody else's research and shown to be just noticeably different, different enough so that they can be regarded as contributions. And I think this is, I think this is, I mean, I speak myself as an exile, a fugitive from the academic world.

And one of the reasons I'm happy to have left it is that I think it is stupefying the way that this obsession with originality leads through the paradoxical, paradoxes internal to the concept of originality to a deep intellectual conformity. Catherine. I think I'm inclined to agree with that. I'm disturbed to discover that in most universities have the rule that, PhD thesis, which after all you produce at the age of 25 or so, has to be an original contribution to knowledge. Couldn't we just settle for contribution to knowledge? I suppose giving them the benefit of the doubt, what they're saying is a non-plagiarised contribution

to knowledge, which I suppose is a good idea. But I do think that to use that word brings in all the philosophical complexities and paradoxes that we've happily been discussing. Well, I'd like to come back to Voltaire. I mean, I think he's right. I think we're all plagiarists, really, and originality is nothing more than judicious plagiarism. And if we think in any other way, it's an illusion. But it's rather like the Churchill thing, we're all worms, but some of us are glowworms.

I mean, we're all plagiarists, but some of us are perhaps inventive and original plagiarism. Yes, it's the issue of who wants to be a glowworm, whether we want to be or not, yes. You'd feel a song coming on there, John. Well, thank you all very much. Beck's sweep, leave it not. We'll be looking at the life cycle of stars

with Paul Mirdin, Janelleven and Phil Charles. But thanks to three of you, and thank you very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.uk forward slash radio 4.