Jerrold Levinson

This essay explores some aspects of the relation between philosophy and music. First, how music can inspire philosophy; second, how philosophy can inspire music. Mathematics as a middle term between music and philosophy, the idea of wholeness in a musical composition or a philosophical text, music as a mode of thought displaying traits such as logic, coherence, and sense—these are some ways in which music and philosophy may be seen to be connected. Also, composers sometimes have explicit recourse to philosophical ideas in advancing their music, there being prominent examples of this in the twentieth century. Lastly, given there is such a thing as the philosophy of music, might there also be the music of philosophy?

The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics brings the authority, liveliness, and multi-disciplinary scope of the Handbook series to a fascinating theme in philosophy and the arts. Jerrold Levinson has assembled a hugely impressive range of talent to contribute 48 brand-new essays, making this the most comprehensive guide available to the theory, application, history, and future of the field. This Handbook will be invaluable to academics and students across philosophy and all branches of the arts, both as the reference work of choice and as a stimulus to new research and creativity.

In a recent paper devoted to my topic, music and morality, my fellow philosopher of music Peter Kivy makes a helpful tripartite distinction among ways in which music could be said to have moral force. The first is by embodying and conveying moral insight; Kivy labels that epistemic moral force. The second is by having a positive moral effect on behavior; Kivy labels that behavioral moral force. And the third is by impacting positively on character so as to make someone a better human being; Kivy labels that character-building moral force.

This paper effectively inverts the argument of an earlier paper of mine, “The Particularisation of Attributes”, to argue that there are no necessarily particularised and unshareable attributes of the sort that contemporary metaphysics calls tropes. In that earlier paper I distinguished two kinds of attributes, namely, properties and qualities, and argued that if there were tropes they could only be particularised qualities, i.e. particularisations of, say, redness, rather than particularisations of, say, being red. While continuing to hold that there cannot be particularised properties—that the very notion is oxymoronic—I now hold, further, that the supposition of qualities in addition to properties is both ontologically extravagant and conceptually outlandish. Hence there are no qualities, and thus no tropes either.

Le son musical est vibration, et dépend des instruments utilisés. Être fidèle aux instruments prévus par le compositeur ne répond pas à un simple souci d’authenticité. Notre écoute de l’œuvre musicale dépend des gestes instrumentaux pratiqués par les musiciens (gestes que nous voyons au concert, ou que nous supposons si la musique est enregistrée). Les gestes proprement musicaux (liés à l’expressivité de la musique) sont fonction des gestes effectifs pratiqués par l’instrumentiste. Chaque instrument dispose ainsi d’un véritable répertoire gestuel, plus important quand le bras est engagé (violon) que lorsque ce sont seulement les doigts (flûte à bec). La technique de jeu de l’instrument, sa capacité à produire tel ou tel type d’ornement, jouent un rôle important dans la création musicale. L’orchestre, enfin, peut être considéré comme une sorte de grand corps discontinu dont joue le chef d’orchestre

Résumé Pouvons-nous trouver une plaisanterie raciste ou sexiste à la fois drôle et moralement condamnable? Certains répondent « non », soit en tentant de montrer que l’immoralité disparaît dans le contexte de la plaisanterie, soit en soutenant que de telles plaisanteries ne sont pas réellement drôles ou ne devraient pas être trouvées telles. L’article soutient au contraire que oui! Et c’est de la mauvaise foi que de ne pas le reconnaître. La question est alors de savoir si leur immoralité nuit à leur drôlerie et, plus largement, à leur valeur. Encore oui! Dans un dialogue critique avec les travaux de Ted Cohen, de Berys Gaut et de Noël Carroll, il montre que nous rions de ces plaisanteries lorsque nous faisons nôtres, au moins provisoirement, les stéréotypes blâmables qu’elles véhiculent et que, en même temps, nous nous sentons coupables de le faire.

Expressive music, almost everyone agrees, evokes an emotional response of some kind in receptive listeners, at least some of the time, in at least some conditions of listening. But is such an emotional response distinctive of or unique to the music that evokes it? In other words, is there such a thing as music-specific emotion? This essay is devoted to an exploration of that question and others related to it. In the main part of the essay a sixpart component model of a standard emotion is set out, and a case is made for the music-specificity of an emotional response to music of a mirroring sort, with respect to four of the six components of such emotion. In the latter part of the essay aspects of the phenomenology of the music-listening experience, and especially that of the inner sounding of music being heard, are explored further, and issues of the value, communicability, and degree of singularity of the emotional response to expressive music are addressed.