Knowing as Instancing: Jazz Improvisation and Moral Perfectionism

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58 (2):99-111 (2000)
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Abstract

This essay presents an approach to understanding improvised music, finding in the work of certain outstanding jazz musicians an emblem of Ralph Waldo Emerson's notion of self-trust and of Stanley Cavell's notion of moral perfectionism. The essay critiques standard efforts to interpret improvised solos as though they were composed, contrasting that approach to one that treats the procedures of improvisation as derived from our everyday actions. It notes several levels of correspondence between our interest in jazz improvisations and the particular demands of Emerson's writing, and ends by considering how exemplary moments of instruction in jazz are expressive of Emersonian self-trust.

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William Day
Le Moyne College

Citations of this work

Improvisation in the Arts.Aili Bresnahan - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (9):573-582.
Hearing Between the Lines: Impressions of Meaning and Jazz's Democratic Esotericism.William Day - 2023 - Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies 11 (1):75-88.
Jazz Improvisation, the Body, and the Ordinary.William Day - 2002 - Tidskrift För Kulturstudier 5:80-94.

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