This text is the fruit of almost fifteen years of research on the philosophy and the aesthetics of improvisation. By discussing the specific aesthetic qualities of improvisation in the arts and by proposing some ideas about the contribution of artistic improvisation to aesthetics and to the philosophy of art as such, this work brings one philosophical exploration to its end by opening new theoretical perspectives—for example, on the question of artistic authenticity, on aesthetic normativity, and on the role of habits in the aesthetic realm—which will be the focus of my reflection in the immediate future.

When the Italian edition of this volume was almost ready to be submitted to the publisher in February of 2020, we experienced the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic right here in Italy. I was and am absorbed in the theme of improvisation—which fascinates me both as an artistic practice and as a philosophical question—and perhaps for this reason the most philosophically interesting consequence of this decidedly extraordinary condition in which humanity had suddenly come to find itself at the beginning of 2020 was, it seemed to me, that all of us had to improvise. Two years later, we are still not free—and now another terrible unexpected event, the Russian military attack on Ukraine, dominates our attention. I am not a fan of philosophical interventionism. I think, as Hegel maintained, that philosophy is like the owl of Minerva: it takes flight at dusk. Thus, to say something meaningful about what happens takes time: one needs to wait in order to be able to view things with some distance. Therefore, I refrained from joining the throngs gathered in the public square of social media to express my “thoughts on COVID.” In fact, it would seem somewhat suspect for a philosopher who studies improvisation to bring up improvisation as a way to explain life in the time of COVID—other philosophers have taken the wind out of their own sails in this way, that is, rummaging through their conceptual arsenal to explain what was happening. Unfortunately, it is obvious that these contributions were on the whole rather shoddy. However, now that some time has passed, I believe one can rightly claim what I just suggested: in order to react to the emergency of COVID-19, we all had to improvise, we could only improvise, acting—as Walter Benjamin comments—“with our left hand” (or, with the right, for those who are left-handed). And these improvisations have functioned, and continue to function, only partially. When the unexpected unforeseen happens, above all when it is somewhat disturbing, you do what you can, and make the best of the situation. It is not easy to improvise well, redesigning our practices and activities on the fly. And yet, some positive outcome—some—might come from this tragedy: much will depend—and in reality, now already depends—on if we will know how to take cues in a creatively effective way from the unexpected.

The pandemic has exhibited the fact that the human being, in its interactions with the natural and social environment, improvises. Certainly, it organizes behavioral habits and builds social institutions in order to shape and engender these interactions. But habits and institutions are shaped by more than voluntary actions: they also take part in the—as in the case of the pandemic, the often rather serious—“game” of interactions that plays out between human beings and their environment.

The human being, in short, improvises. It is always improvising. Sometimes it is limited to improvising in a reactive way to respond to unforeseen contingencies (which perhaps, as Emmanuel Alloa suggested in one of the more interesting philosophical contributions at the beginning of the lockdown,¹ eliminate that very contingency, relegating us to our homes). And yet the organization of our relation to the unforeseen situations in which our (inter)actions are realized is the normal condition of our existence. One must certainly not forget that this condition is not the same for everyone. Some like me are paid to teach philosophy; and yet, others pay to risk drowning at sea in the desperate attempt to maintain a sliver of hope for a better life. Thus, there are those who possess better resources for improvising, and those who do not. Nonetheless, whether willingly or unwillingly, everyone improvises.

However, when it comes to deliberate, and in particular, to artistic improvisation, i.e. to improvisation as a way intentionally chosen to produce art, things are different. Precisely, the practice and experience of artistic improvisation has suffered greatly from the restrictions imposed to counter the pandemic: the pandemic made live entertainment, including improvisational performances, impossible for a long time. Of course, the possibilities offered by digital technology and, in particular, by the Internet have constituted an Ersatz, a substitute for forms of improvisational musical performance, as well as for other improvisational artistic practices—at times with unexpectedly positive results in terms of expressive effectiveness. As in other areas of social life (academic webinars come to mind), the possibility of connecting with people located in different parts of the globe has favored forms of communication and interaction that were not very widespread before the pandemic.² Also, within the artistic field, the state of emergency has prompted reactions capable of resolving some of the problems it has generated, thereby forcing us to be creative. However, despite these substitute forms and these new creative possibilities, which will surely evolve in the near future, the constraints imposed by anti-pandemic measures on artistic expressiveness, including that of the improvisational arts, have made it clear that the possibility of practicing and experiencing improvisation is vital to the artistic fields. Hence, the importance of elaborating an aesthetics of improvisation, which is precisely the theme of this book.

Unlike the collected volume edited by me and Marcello Ruta (the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Improvisation in the Arts), whose preparation was literally overwhelmed by the consequences of the pandemic, the Italian version of this book was practically completed when the outbreak began. Perhaps also for this reason, this book is not specifically about improvisation as an ordinary condition of our existence.³ Of course, the first pages of the book briefly note that improvisation is both a particular type of action and the general condition of acting: I will leave it to the reader, while leafing through the following pages of this book, to understand how this double role of improvisation can be reasonably conceived. Instead, this book is specifically about artistic improvisation and analyzes its aesthetic sense. And, while improvising on the notes of one of Nietzsche’s famous books, this essay takes its cue from a Hegelian thesis: the sense of art, in general, is that of representing the human being to itself. Therefore, improvisation makes sense as exhibition of the improvisational character of human existence, which consists—basically—in a continual confrontation—creative, but exposed to the risk of failure—with the contingencies of life. Art—to echo (a sort of) Nietzsche—is born from the spirit of improvisation.

But this book does not remain with Hegel (re-read, if you will, through a neo-pragmatic lens and placed into dialogue with the research on embodied cognition and the work of Michel de Certeau and Tim Ingold). To expose the “categories” of the grammar of contingency, which artistic improvisation articulates, in unforeseeable ways, in the different artistic practices and in which resides the sense of a practice from an unsure outcome, I creatively gather ideas and suggestions derived from a variety of philosophical sources: from Jankélévitch to Margolis, passing through Arendt, Sartre, Eco, Derrida, Davies, Goehr and many others (which inevitably includes some talented Italian colleagues). The main point of my thesis is this: the principle aesthetic specificity of improvisation consists in the capacity to (co)respond to the unforeseen in a formatively effective way. As a result, improvisation in the arts makes sense as a practice of sense-making. Certainly, this does not always happen and improvisation can present itself as the boring repetition of what is always the same (hence Adorno’s hatred of improvisation and jazz); on the other hand, even when the aesthetic outcome of improvisation is surprisingly felicitous, that does not mean that the improviser is a Genius in the Romantic sense. Rather, improvisation sets into motion and circulates a distributive creativity—among artists, artistic traditions, the materials and the adopted forms, the situation itself of the performance and thus also the audience.

It is, moreover, crucial to clarify now that the so-called “aesthetics of imperfection” is inadequate for improvisation. Certainly, among the exponents of the aesthetics of imperfection—most notably, Andy Hamilton—some embrace positions that are very refined and respectful of the specificity of the arts of improvisation; it is a decidedly respectable position (and, I will add, very different than that of some contemporary ontologists—quite fond of a naive ideology of authenticity—who consider improvisation to be in itself inauthentic, since, as they erroneously maintain, it would consist in the deviation from the canon, from the norm, from the score or from the script). Recently, Hamilton himself elaborated the idea that the specific characteristic of improvisation is its relation with the contingency of the condition of the artistic performance. That points precisely in the direction that I propose to follow in this book.

Nevertheless, the point that I believe is crucial to appreciate is above all this: the relation with contingency can be appropriately articulated solely by an “aesthetics of success”—an expression that I have retrieved from the Turinese philosopher, Luigi Pareyson, author of the book Estetica: Teoria della formatività and teacher of Gianni Vattimo and Umberto Eco (Pareyson’s aesthetic theory has for decades in Italy provided an alternative to the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce).

In such a way, improvisation, as such, does not however present a “strange case” for aesthetics, some exception to the rule (precisely the notion of exception was evoked with annoying insistence, and not quite appropriately, by one of the most bombastic of the philosophers who intervened during the time and on the subject of COVID). Instead, improvisation is the rule of art: it offers the paradigm for aesthetics and for art—or, at least, this is my thesis. Thanks to the adoption of a neo-Wittgensteinian, neo-hermeneutic, and to some extent, neo-Kantian perspective, I ultimately argue that the transformative, and situated, normativity belonging to improvisation presents—in a nutshell—what happens on a broader scale in the realm of aesthetic normativity. Improvisation is the performative practice of Kantian aesthetic judgment (as Gary Peters also claims in one of his relatively recent books) that exhibits the conditions of aesthetic experience and the aesthetic conditions of experience. And, if it succeeds, it realizes a “common sense”, as that also involves the opening of the (e)utopian dimension of a felicitous sociality.

For this reason, allow me to add: in this time of the pandemic, when we have been forced to improvise existence in at times radical ways and often without satisfactory outcomes, deprived—some more than others—of the possibility of a creative and expressive experience of the relation with contingency, the need to live the liberating pleasure of artistic improvisation is perhaps more intense. Understanding its aesthetic dimension can prepare us to appreciate, even more, its specific artistic features and the contribution it can offer to the arts, to creativity, and, ultimately, to life. Or at least, it is with this hope that I entrust these pages to your reading.

Alessandro Bertinetto

Turin, Italy,

March 17, 2022