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2682Die Idee der VerwandlungIn Verwandlungsmusik. Über komponierte Transfigurationen, Universal Edition. pp. 11-51. 2007.Within the European history of ideas, at least three conceptions of metamorphosis can be distinguished. First, as celebrated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is the vision of an open-ended flux of shapes in all directions, potentially with the ambiguous result of wavering identity. Secondly, at the centre of the synoptic gospels Jesus’s transfiguration is presented as a luminous elevation, rendering his true nature unambiguous. Thirdly, alchemy conceives of metamorphosis as contingent upon a meeti…Read more
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888Mundrys NuancenIn Heike Hoffmann (ed.), Salzburg Biennale 2015, Salzburg Biennale. pp. 62-64. 2015.The production of artworks can be based on a fixed modus operandi, i.e., on a general manner and, alongside, specific patterns to be applied all over again. Alternatively, each artwork can be seen as (cor-)responding to an individual problem for which there is no recipe; in this case it needs to be looked at afresh. That approach characterizes the aesthetics of music composer Isabel Mundry (*1963); her art, ever unpredictable, is one of nuances.
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820The Idea of Order: Enlightened RevisionsArchiv für Rechts-Und Sozialphilosophie 98 (2): 185-196. 2012.Order has been ascribed both to nature and to society. There is a long tradition of claiming that the social order and the natural order are closely linked. Radical enlightenment challenged that tradition. According to Spinoza to call something orderly simply means that we can easily imagine and remember it; ascribing order thus betrays merely something about us, not about things. This challenging idea never became Enlightenment mainstream. In fact, ties between an objective natural order and ou…Read more
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765Was hat Musik im Film zu suchen?In Tonspuren. Musik im Film: Fallstudien 1994 - 2001, Universal Edition. pp. 12-21. 2005.Attempts to bestow a musical background upon spoken drama have been deemed widely superfluous; most films, by way of contrast, do employ music. This aesthetic divergence invites an account of film music in terms of lack and compensation. The standard account in such terms, viz. that music has to fill the vacuum of silence, does not explain what it is supposed to explain. Rather, music in cinema can restore in a different way the expression lost as reality is reduced to mere pictures.
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757Ist soziale Gerechtigkeit ein ‘sinnloser’ Begriff? Zu einer These Friedrich August von HayeksÖsterreichische Zeitschrift Für Soziologie 13 (1): 4-13. 1988.
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683What does it mean to be conservative? What could it mean in the arts? Whoever merely conserves works of art may be a collector but is not an artist. Brahms’s trio op. 40 conserves the hand horn idiom. Yet its aesthetics will not be captured by the opposition of ‘conservative’ versus ‘progressive’. What is superior in terms of technology, Brahms maintained, need not be superior in terms of art.
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682Individualism for the Masses: Aesthetic Paradox in Mahler’s Symphonic ThoughtIn Elisabeth Kappel (ed.), The Total Work of Art: Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Context, Universal Edition. pp. 46-60. 2011.In his Eighth Symphony Gustav Mahler envisions modern artistic production to steer clear of an alternative emerging at the time: that between popular music on the one hand and esoteric avantgarde music on the other; Mahler’s music is meant to reach the masses, but without descending to audiences’ lowest common denominator. One query through which Mahler’s paradoxical aesthetic vision of an ‘individualism for the masses’ can be explored has been hinted at by the composer himself: Does his integra…Read more
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584Das anwesend Abwesende: Musik und ErinnerungIn Resonanzen. Vom Erinnern in der Musik, Universal Edition. pp. 12-29. 2007.Remembrance is constitutive of music. For music emerges not as an isolated physical stimulus. Rather, it is experienced, i.e., a present musical moment is tied to its temporal antecedents. It is tempting to conceive of remembrance as repetition and as thus opposed to oblivion. Yet to memory selectivity is crucial. What is not selected, falls into oblivion. Hence as we remember we have forgotten already. The present moment evokes remembrance, and exhibits what was then in the light of what is now…Read more
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583Darwinismus als Kritikverbot. Zu Friedrich August von Hayeks Theorie der MoralevolutionAufklärung Und Kritik 3 (1): 31-40. 1996.
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565Gestaltung und EthikConceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 28 (72): 63-81. 1995.In design theory, moral categories have traditionally been used in favour of objectivity and soberness to oppose designers' aesthetic narcissism. This use of moral concepts is directed at the individual design object. The situation gets more complicated, however, as soon as the totality (or a large number) of objects of a certain type raises problems which could not have been predicted from features of the individual object as such. The essay attempts to clarify how ethical concepts could be rel…Read more
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551Über Ausdruck, insbesondere den musikalischenIn Andreas Dorschel & Elisabeth Kappel (eds.), Friedrich von Hausegger, Die Musik als Ausdruck, Universal Edition. pp. 152-177. 2010.To call a piece of music sad or joyous need not imply reference to a subjective state. Speaking in this vein, we do not have to attribute sad or joyous feelings to the composer or to the performer. Nor do we predict that listeners will become sad or joyful when they will listen to a performance of that composition. Musical expression is not a mode of consciousness in those who produce it and it is not an effect of music either. Rather, it is a feature of the music itself. Once we have discarded …Read more
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550Historische Konjunktive: zur Geschichtsschreibung des MöglichenIn Andreas Haug & Andreas Dorschel (eds.), Vom Preis des Fortschritts: Gewinn und Verlust in der Musikgeschichte, Universal Edition. pp. 33-52. 2008.Reference to past possibilities is not an additional luxury in writing history, after all facts have been established. For even facts become such only within a field of alternative options. What it means that one path was taken depends in part on answers to the question which other paths once open were not taken. Historical potential unrealized can be conceived of in a number of ways: as unfulfilled intentions, as unresolved problems, as suppressed endeavours, as waived alternatives within a con…Read more
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546Vorgriffe. Über Präsumtionen, Präsuppositionen und VorurteileInternationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie 11 (1): 85-100. 2002.
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487Totengespräch zwischen Franz Joseph Haydn aus Rohrau und Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern aus Wien in der musikalischen UnterweltIn Andreas Dorschel & Federico Celestini (eds.), Arbeit am Kanon: Ästhetische Studien zur Musik von Haydn bis Webern, Universal Edition. pp. 9-15. 2010.In the spirit of Fontenelle's "Dialogues des morts", Dorschel stages an imaginary conversation between 18th century composer Joseph Haydn and 20th century composer Anton von Webern. In the section of Hades reserved for composers, they confront their different musical poetics.
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460Furcht und AngstIn Dietmar Goltschnigg (ed.), Angst. Lähmender Stillstand und Motor des Fortschritts, Stauffenburg. pp. 49-54. 2012.Is fear a ‘deficient mode’ of anxiety? This claim made by Martin Heidegger in ‘Being and Time’ (1927) depends on an analysis of intentionality. Emotions take objects: to love, to hate, to fear is to love, to hate, to fear someone or something. Yet anxiety, Heidegger maintains (‘Being and Time’ § 40), is about “nothing” (“nichts”) rather than “something” (“etwas”). Heidegger then turns lack of knowledge or understanding of what one’s anxiety is about into a revelation of “Nothing” (“Die Angst off…Read more
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436Rettende InterpretationIn Otto Kolleritsch (ed.), Musikalische Produktion und Interpretation. Zur historischen Unaufhebbarkeit einer ästhetischen Konstellation, Universal Edition. pp. 199-211. 2003.Aestheticians in the tradition of Critical Theory have claimed that the or a purpose of musical interpretation is somehow to save or salvage or rescue ("retten") the musical work. What sense, if any, can be made of this claim? The notion of salvage or rescue presupposes the concept of danger. Threats to works of art emerge from two sources: from outside and from inside. Whilst the former problem is only touched upon, the latter is discussed in some detail, using the example of Brahms' Alto Rhaps…Read more
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425Metaphysisch malen: Philosophie und Bild bei Giorgio de ChiricoIn Kunst und Wissen in der Moderne, Böhlau. pp. 123-132. 2009.‘Metaphysical painting’ (‘pittura metafisica’) is a paradoxical term: extrasensory sensuousness, as it were. Painting is the representation of visible surfaces; metaphysics rejects surfaces, as deceptive, in favour of the deeper essence. But Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) who coined the term ‘pittura metafisica’ in 1919 was a follower of the anti-essentialist Nietzsche. ‘Metaphysics’, then, is not about discovering the essence of things but about shaping their appearances, their ‘physique’. This…Read more
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419Gefühl als Argument?In Andreas Dorschel, Matthias Kettner, Wolfgang Kuhlmann & Marcel Niquet (eds.), Transzendentalpragmatik. Ein Symposion für Karl-Otto Apel, Suhrkamp. pp. 167-186. 1993.Does having some feeling or other ever count as an argument – and, should it? As a matter of fact, not just do persons sometimes refer to their feelings to make a point in debate. Often, they even treat them as irrefutable arguments; for they are, of course, certain of their own feelings. To make a point in debate by reference to one’s feelings, one has got to articulate them. As language is the core medium of debate (though it can be supported by images etc.), feelings, then, have to be articul…Read more
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416Der allgemeine Wille. Zu Rousseaus Contrat social (1762)Zeitschrift Für Didaktik der Philosophie Und Ethik 32 (1): 31-33. 2010.In his 'Contrat social', § 2.1, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that the general will alone can steer the forces of the state towards the end for which it was instituted, i.e., the common good. The argument's logical structure is more intricate than it seems at first glance. And the intricacy appears to be deliberate. Rousseau's authorial strategy is designed to evoke the reader's voice in articulating the fundamentals of politics.
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377Hat die Soziobiologie eine Bedeutung für die Ethik?Filosofia 19 130-145. 1989.It is known that sociobiology, the theory of the biological origins of the social behavior of living beings, is related to ethics. However, sociobiology does not include moral doctrines but simply describes facts. The present essay discusses two basic theses, “altruism” and “reciprocal altruism”, in order to prove that a natural science free of judgments and evaluations is contrary to a theory of ethics, such as the theory of Kant and Apel, as well as to intuitive theories of ethics. Ethics is t…Read more
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358Offener Brief an Magister Alexander Gottlieb BaumgartenIn Philip Alperson & Andreas Dorschel (eds.), Vollkommenes hält sich fern. Ästhetische Näherungen, Universal Edition. pp. 9-15. 2012.
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358Vom Genießen. Reflexionen zu Richard StraussIn Gemurmel unterhalb des Rauschens. Theodor W. Adorno und Richard Strauss, Universal Edition. pp. 23-37. 2004.The work of Richard Strauss has been disparaged as a music designed to be relished (“Genußmusik” was Adorno’s term), lacking any dimension of ‘transcendence’. The notion of ‘relish’ or ‘pleasure’ (“Genuß”), used for characterization rather than disparagement, can disclose crucial aspects of Strauss’s art, though it does not exhaust it. To oppose ‘relish’ or ‘pleasure’ (“Genuß”) to ‘transcendence’, however, either uses hidden theological premises or disregards that ‘relish’ or ‘pleasure’ (“Genuß”…Read more
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336Religion als 'Teilsystem'? Zu Niklas Luhmanns 'Die Unterscheidung Gottes'Österreichische Zeitschrift Für Soziologie 11 (3): 12-18. 1986.
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325A morál költségei – Kant nyomán számolvaMagyar Filozofiai Szemle (4-5): 678-708. 1991.Acting morally comes at a price. The fewer people act morally, the dearer moral acts will be to those who perform them. Even if it could be proven that a certain moral norm were valid, the question might still be open whether, under certain circumstances, the demand to follow it meant asking too much. The validity of a moral norm is independent from actual compliance. In that regard, moral norms differ from legal rules. A law that nobody obeys has eroded and thus lost validity; a moral norm that…Read more
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319Is there any Normative Claim Internal to Stating Facts?Communication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal 21 5-16. 1988.
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259Die Kosten der Moral. Nachgerechnet an KantConcordia 18 2-25. 1990.Acting morally comes at a price. The fewer people act morally, the dearer moral acts will be to those who perform them. Even if it could be proven that a certain moral norm were valid, the question might still be open whether, under certain circumstances, the demand to follow it meant asking too much. The validity of a moral norm is independent from actual compliance. In that regard, moral norms differ from legal rules. A law that nobody obeys has eroded and thus lost validity; a moral norm that…Read more
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248Einwände gegen das Vergleichen. Ein Versuch, sie zu beantwortenPhilosophisches Jahrbuch 113 (1): 175-183. 2006.
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
19th Century Philosophy |
European Philosophy |