ABSTRACT
Affirming the other, the new, in all the different modalities I have considered in this book, including the invention of the work of art and the just response to it, makes demands. Creatively responding to the other, we have seen, involves the shifting of ingrained modes of understanding in order to take account of that which was systematically excluded by them. Attentiveness to what is outside the familiar requires effort, even if it is the effort of resisting effortful behavior, of emptying out the too full, excessively goal-oriented consciousness. What drives and directs this effort? We can talk about motivation in terms of the pleasures and rewards to be gained from creating a work that is original and influential, or from doing justice in a creative response to the uniqueness of a person or an artifact, but motivation of this sort accounts only for the wish to be inventive, and does not seem enough to account for what actually happens. The act, it seems, springs from a hard-to-explain commitment to the other, to the new, to that which is coming into being.
