Aesthetics of Improvisation / / Alessandro Bertinetto ; Translated from Italian by Robert T. Valgenti

• Superior document: Contemporary Perspectives in European Philosophy / Zeitgenössische Perspektiven europäischer Philosophie ; 2
• VerfasserIn: Bertinetto, Alessandro,
• Place / Publishing House: Paderborn : : Ferdinand Schöningh, Brill | Fink,, 2022.; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Contemporary Perspectives in European Philosophy / Zeitgenössische Perspektiven europäischer Philosophie ; 2; Schöningh, Fink and mentis Religious Studies, Theology and Philosophy E-Books Online, Collection 2022.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (179 pages)
• Other title: Preliminary Material /
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• ISBN: 3846767077
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Alessandro Bertinetto ; Translated from Italian by Robert T. Valgenti

This essay develops a theory of improvisation as practice of aesthetic sense-making. While considering all arts, references are made to many concrete cases. A topic in vogue since the XX. century, as evidenced by the great philosophers who were interested in it (Ryle, Derrida, Eco among others), improvisation, a felicitous mixture of habit and creativity, norm and freedom, is constitutive of human action. Human practices – including very well-regulated activities such as playing chess, piloting airplanes, or medicine – permit and often require it to varying degrees. Improvisation is also the true source of artistic experience. Consequently, the aesthetics of improvisation result in a philosophy of art: Art was born as improvisation. Yet improvisation has its own aesthetic dimension: that of a "grammar of contingency" in which notions such as emergence, presence, curiosity and authenticity explain the pleasures of joyful adventure and empathic involvement elicited by improvisation.