Kant’s Concept of Power of Judgment and the Logic of Artistic Improvisation

In this contribution we will argue that Immanuel Kant’s concept of Urteilskraft can give us a clue, and can be indeed of great help, in order to try to grasp what we would like to call here “the logic of artistic improvisation”. Our specific focus, in investigating this topic, will be in particular on the way in which improvisation is practiced in artistic practices, such as jazz, improvised dance, improvised theater, but in non-performing arts as well. In other words, although simply conceiving of this original development in terms of “application” could be problematic and to some extent misleading, we will try to “apply” Kant’s concepts of power of judgment and genius to artistic improvisation.