Metaphysics and Music in Adorno and Heidegger

223 Pages·2015·1.05 MB·English

by  Wesley Phillips (auth.)

Metaphysics and Music in Adorno and Heidegger
Metaphysics and Music in
Adorno and Heidegger
Wesley Phillips
Independent Scholar, UK
Palgrave
macmillan
© Wesley Phillips 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-48724-7
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, Wesley, 1976–
Metaphysics and music in Adorno and Heidegger / Wesley Phillips.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Music – Philosophy and aesthetics. 2. Adorno, Theodor W.,
1903–1969 – Criticism and interpretation. 3. Heidegger, Martin,
1889–1976 – Criticism and interpretation. 4. Wagner, Richard,
1813–1883 – Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
ML3800.P455 2015
781.1(cid:2)7—dc23 2015004273
For Alban
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
1 Melancholy Science as Dissonant System 11
Resignation and the infinite task 11
Language, system, music 14
Melancholy science in Schelling and Benjamin 21
The idea of natural history 30
Heidegger’s melancholy history? 35
Ideas of music and the musical idea 37
Dissonant nominalism 42
2 Twisting Free With/Of Wagner 46
The ‘actuality’ of Wagner 46
Adorno on Wagner 48
Ego(t)ism and love 48
Dialectic of decadence 54
Willing and waiting (I) 62
Heidegger on Wagner 63
Turning Heidegger against Heidegger 63
Aesthetics of willing 65
M usic or poetry? 70
Twisting free as Aufhebung 74
Willing and waiting (II) 80
3 The Dialectical Image of Music 82
Two spheres of musical experience 82
Music as image(less) 86
Schematism, rhythm, temporalisation 8 9
Fantasy and spectacle 98
Nono’s mimesis 103
Nono’s late fermata 109
Turning around the dialectical image 111
vii
viii Contents
4 Invincible in the Wasteland? Music, Space and Utopia 113
Negativity in Cacciari and Adorno 113
The metropolis and tragic negativity 115
Mimesis and rationality 121
Non-place and non-dwelling 123
Intermezzo: of music and space 129
Nono’s spaces of resistance 131
Prometeo and the place of the artwork 134
5 The Expression of Waiting in Vain 142
Adorno 142
The promise of metaphysics 142
After metaphysics? 148
Heidegger 155
Boredom as fundamental attunement 1 55
World, whole, history 159
Adorno and Heidegger 164
Boredom and waiting 1 64
Waiting or destining? 169
Notes 175
Bibliography 203
I ndex 213
Preface
For various reasons, the current book was a long time in the making,
and the author’s research focus has evolved over this time. For an indi-
cation of other research undertaken in recent years, a list of the author’s
publications may be found in the Bibliography section towards the end
of this book.
Three subsections have appeared elsewhere in different forms. An
earlier version of part of Chapter 1 appeared as, ‘Melancholy Science?
German Idealism and Critical Theory Reconsidered’, in T elos, 157
(2011). A musicologically and historically elaborated version of material
relating to Luigi Nono, here represented in the third and fourth chap-
ters, appeared as, ‘Spaces of Resistance: The Adorno–Nono Complex’, in
Twentieth Century Music , 9 (2012).
All translations into English are by the author unless stated otherwise
in the notes.
ix
Acknowledgements
For their critical responses to earlier drafts of this book, I am grateful
to both Peter Osborne and Peter Hallward. I also wish to thank Charles
Wilson for his invaluable musicological advice and editorial support. I
am grateful to my editor and reviewer for their helpful comments and
suggestions. Finally, for encouraging me to write this book and for her
general support, I remain infinitely grateful to Yaiza.

x
Introduction
Continental philosophy is an umbrella term covering a plurality of phil-
osophical traditions that have historically emanated from the continent
of Europe towards the English-speaking world (an emanation that is now
bi- and multi-directional, rendering the appellation ‘Continental’ at best
nominal). Indeed, Continental philosophy has never been so plural, for
the number of these traditions has accumulated since its emergence in
the 1970s. The question of what unifies the Continental umbrella lies
beyond the scope of this introduction. No doubt, it would be simpler
to define Continental philosophy in the manner that its detractors
originally coined it: n ot analytic philosophy.1 Nevertheless, any posi-
tive attempt to define the idiom would have to proceed politically as
well as philosophically – that is to say, in its post-1968 context. What
was required was a philosophy that would change the world and not
merely interpret it. In this respect, that which has unified these tradi-
tions concerns, on the one hand, a recognition of the limitations of an
academic philosophy that disingenuously duplicates the ‘rigour’ of the
positive sciences; and, on the other hand, an attempt to think beyond
these limitations, to bring philosophy into contact with the world both
as it is and as it ought to be. In order to respond to this ‘ought’, philos-
ophy is compelled to engage with that which positivist philosophy
rejected: metaphysics, understood as the question of the whole.
A central motivation behind this book is a sense that this moment of
engagement with the problem of metaphysics remains the problem of
Continental philosophy – a problem that has nevertheless slipped from
its grasp over recent years. It could be said that the discourse has lurched
from a postmodern rejection of metaphysics into a premodern affirma-
tion of it. In some cases, this affirmation has abandoned the political
‘project’ altogether (strands of speculative realism being a notable
1