To explore the realm of creativity, we will make use of the concept of instauration as articulated in the work of Étienne Souriau. Although infrequently used, the word remains extant in English, with agreement among dictionaries that the primary definition is the action of restoring or renewing, with a secondary meaning of instituting or founding. While both senses are at play in Souriau’s thought, it is perhaps the tension between the two that is predominantly in question, akin to what we describe as open containment. We think instauration, as institutive renewal, in dialogue with Merleau-Ponty’s late use of the term aesthesiology to further elaborate the process of creating as a return to the wonder that is aesthesis, the affectively and sensually apprehended opening onto and entanglement with what is. Merleau-Ponty extends aesthesiology as the science of the sense organs themselves into a philosophical organology for ontology. His use of aesthesiology and Souriau’s use of instauration constitute efforts to offer sufficient conceptual containment to be able to say the contingent and ambiguous open of ongoing originating, even while both thinkers strive not to institute any final closure by this very act of naming. This is the inevitable tension of writing philosophic creation.
