Pauline von Bonsdorff: Play and practice 7acf580c8d754c4b8477b2dda0f2532c

According to seminal texts in aesthetics by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich von Schiller, the free play of the mental faculties (Kant) or the “play-drive” (Schiller) is central for issues such as balancing mental life, realizing freedom, becoming aware of values, and helping to fulfill our personal potential. However, in these authors, play goes on in the mind of an individual. What if we think about play more concretely, as actions in the world, with objects or other people? In such cases, e.g., in children’s play or in playing games, playing is a chosen pastime and a practice, understood as a type of action. Not surprisingly, children’s play and playing games can be characterized as typical aesthetic practices, with room for expressive variation and novel contributions, and based on personal commitment. In my talk, I formulate some suggestions about the relationship between play as the novel, improvisational or dialogic aspect of aesthetic practice on the one hand and its habitual, repeated, experienced aspect on the other. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s insights about the temporally layered structure of experience and Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge, I suggest that the reciprocal relationship between improvisation or novelty (play) and experience (practice) in aesthetic practice is multilayered and needs to be understood broadly. Second, aesthetic practices, comprising the “practice of play”, support our freedom by on the one hand giving room for novelty, surprise, and unsuspected choices and on the other hand demonstrating the role of personal commitment in realizing them.