Finite Provinces of Meaning and Responsiveness, Responsibility, and Jazz

While Schutz singles out the social feature of music from its other features and shows how it can illuminate all social interactions, this chapter considers how the non-social features of the province of music enhance sociality in music. It also shows how the non-social features of play similarly enrich playful sociality as “responsiveness.” A third section highlights the ambivalence of the non-social features of pragmatic everyday life in promoting or not responsiveness to others. A fourth section contrasts Emmanuel Levinas’s idea of ethical interpersonal responsibility with Schutz’s account of aesthetic/cognitive responsiveness to others. A fifth section suggests how, in the performance of jazz, responsibility and responsiveness converge, without losing their distinctiveness.