ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to begin a philosophical exploration of the issues by focusing on a particular case—the relationship between negative affective experience and artistic creativity. There is a strong, empirically documented link between artistic creativity and psychiatric mood disorders. In addition, some people believe that the link between artistic creativity and mental illness may be tight: that darkly negative mood may turn out to be necessary for artistic creative expression. Many people believe that negative psychological experiences can have extrinsic prudential value. Indeed, there is some reason to believe that negative psychological experiences offer artists certain kinds of insights. However, the interesting question is whether individuals are ever in the position to reasonably judge prospectively that such experiences have sufficient extrinsic prudential value to make them worth choosing or enduring. There are several different ways one might think about the relationship between negative affect and creativity.
