Criminal Creology:Equivalency between Criminal Activity and Creative Activity

Criminal Creology: The Equivalency between Creative Activity Criminal Activity

Published in Saarbrucken Germany (2015) with the Editions universitaires europeennes (ISBN: 978-3-8416-7354-1), Frangi’s Criminal Creology is still stirring students’ curiosity in Lebanon and Europe. Frangi ended Tome I in a general expression that defines the equivalency between creative activity and criminal activity (and by extension transgression, since every criminal activity is by definition a kind of transgression).

Studying in a first book, “the previous theories of crime”, Dr Frangi notes that all these theories study the causes of crime outside the human act, from the point of view of man, society, or the environment. To shift the study of crime from the outside into the human act itself is the creologic theory of crime (Book II). This is a theory that Frangi proposed in 1982 (then, 21 years old) in a DEA thesis in criminal law (“Introduction a la Creologie criminelle”), then in a Ph.D. thesis in criminal law and criminal sciences (1986), at the Faculty of Law of the University of Poitiers (France). Dr. Petra Hannah commented on Frangi's creologic theory of crime in 2008 in two articles published in the Lebanese daily “Al Anwar” (January 31, 2008, p.19; February 7, 2008, p.19). In addition, Dr. Hannah commented on all Dr. Frangi's research in 25 articles published in the same daily newspaper, from January 24, 2008 to April 6, 2009.

Frangi expresses the equivalency between both activities as follows:

“If one prevents the creative activity of a person, a criminal activity appears. It often happened to the philosopher Crates to give blows to his parents who wanted to divert him from a life devoted to philosophy. On the other hand, if we block the criminal activity, a creative activity appears. A person imprisoned for committing a criminal act naturally engages in creative activity. One appearing when the other is hampered, creative activity and criminal activity thus manifest the same phenomenon in development.” (Paragraph 60)

“Accordingly, the criminal activity that appears when the creative activity is hampered is equivalent to the creative activity minus the effort that the criminal activity provides to overcome the obstacle incurred. This gives us to understand that the creative activity is equivalent to the criminal activity plus the effort the latter makes to overcome the obstacle incurred. The addition of the effort which is specific to criminal activity to creative activity increases the latter by way of criminal activity within the same human act. Therefore, the two activities together equal the same concept of human act.” (Paragraph 67)

Lena Nasr

lena.nasr@outlook.com