ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on improvisation as a specifically artistic phenomenon, and begins with the improvisational nature of existence in general. It argues that phronesis can be thought in terms of “improvisation”. However, to make any kind of sense of phronesis, we need to understand the relation of individual human beings to the polis. Aristotle takes it as a given that we are always part of a polis. He believes that the structure of the polis is so foundational to human existence that it actually precedes that of the family. If we were to describe the kind of phronesis that enables one to improvise as simply a negative freedom, we would have a deeply distorted idea of what the communal freedom of improvisation really is. One way of thinking about this is that composers such as Mozart and Beethoven were master improvisers. Some who heard them improvise thought their improvisations were even greater than their published compositions.
