Some questions asked by the philosophy of music and some answers given by philosophers
Philosophy being the study of the essential nature of existence, reality and knowledge, the philosophy of music, like all types of philosophies, is trying to answer to questions like: ‘How can music be defined?’, ‘How can music be significant in the framework of human existence?’, ‘Music and knowledge: what is the relationship?’, ‘How do music and emotions relate?’, etc. Philosophers who have studied music are numerous, from Plato to Sartre.
Over recent centuries, we may mention for example Leibniz, Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer. Through arithmetic, Leibniz studied the links between music and painting. Kant defined music as an art expressing beauty thanks to harmony and form, adding that its target is to give us a form of pleasure that is disinterested. Schelling, an idealist, thought that music was the purest of the arts, being disembodied. Schopenhauer described music as a place where it is possible to experience freedom for the individual, confronted by a nature that he calls ‘will’ and that is driven by the survival of the species more than by the persons.
The values of music
The philosophy of music may be practiced by all types of scholars, musicians or not. There are atypical profiles: some music philosophers may be novelists, like Tolstoy was, or scientists, like Einstein. In the field of music itself, composers, conductors and performers generally dedicate themselves to their craft, which is composition, while there are philosophers who think about the musical phenomenon: Mozart and Beethoven on one hand, Pythagoras or Adorno on the other hand. However, a composer like John Cage and a conductor like Sergiu Celibidache took time to express how they saw the main aspects of human life and culture through music.
Now, often, the music philosopher is first a philosopher, as we saw above. Let us also mention, from recent decades, Jerrold Levinson, who was first a graduate in the philosophy of science, before becoming interested in the aesthetics of music. Like several researchers in the field of music psychology, Levinson said that the links between language and music are so strong that it could hardly be possible to separate them.
Levinson insisted on the values of music. He distinguished the intrinsic value and the instrumental value of music: the first is the value of engagement with music for its own sake and the second is a means to a good other than the good resulting from engagement with music for its own sake. Levinson also distinguished the value of music for an individual and its value for a given community or more broadly for mankind. These values are different and all individuals do not value music in the same way: the points of view of composers, performers and listeners are complementary rather than identical, even when someone is both composer, performer and listener.