Abstract
The verb “to practice” is commonly used in performing arts, particularly in music, to designate the heuristic method aiming at the intended development of new potentialities of performance and the incorporation of new ways and means into one’s repertoire of animate-bodily expression.
The paper sketches an analysis of practicing in the sense of the specific “mode of the ‘I do’” (Edmund Husserl) that provides access to intentionally extending, modifying, or restructuring the “horizon of ability.” Six structural aspects are distinguished: reiteration, variation, dialogue, transformation, simultaneity, and the self-referentiality of practicing as practice of permanent beginning.
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Notes
- 1.
For a brief overview of the history of this text see: Rojcewicz, Richard and André Schuwer 1989, p. XI-XVI.
- 2.
See the discussion in Truth and Method, particularly the section “The concept of play” (Gadamer 1979, pp. 91–99): “The real subject of the game (this is shown in precisely those experiences in which there is only a single player) is not the player, but instead the game itself.” (Gadamer 1979, pp. 95f). “We have seen that play does not have its being in the consciousness or the attitude of the player, but on the contrary draws the latter into its area and fills him with its spirit.” (Gadamer 1979, p. 98)
- 3.
“It is part of play that the movement is not only without goal or purpose but also without effort. It happens, as it were, by itself. The ease of play, which naturally does not mean that there is any real absence of effort, but phenomenologically refers only to the absence of strain, is experienced subjectively as relaxation. The structure of play absorbs the player into itself, and thus takes from him the burden of the initiative, which constitutes the actual strain of existence.” (Gadamer 1979, p. 94)
- 4.
“Denn wenn sich zeigen läßt, daß das in der Unmittelbarkeit der Erfahrung sich erschließende Prinzip des Wirklichseins des Wirklichen, der Grund seines Seins, zwar kein im Entwurf der Vernunft Beherrschbares, darum aber doch ein Verstehbares und verbindlich Auslegbares ist, dann wird von daher die Aufforderung an den Menschen begründet werden können, diese Fähigkeit des Vernehmens, das nicht herrschen will, wieder auszubilden und sich einer Ordnung des Seins zu fügen, die eine ihm schlechthin und unverfügbar gegebene und auferlegte ist.” (Landgrebe 1963, pp. 140 f.)
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Stascheit, A.G. (2014). Artistic Practice, Methodology, and Subjectivity: The “I Can” as Practical Possibility and Original Consciousness. In: Barber, M., Dreher, J. (eds) The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01390-9_18
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