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The Sound of Ontology

Music as a Model for Metaphysics

Kenneth LaFave

The Sound of Ontology: Music as a Model for Metaphysics explores connections between Western art music in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and the ideas that dominated philosophy leading up to and during that period. In the process of establishing John Cage as Richard Wagner’s heir via Arnold Schoenberg, the author discovers that the old metaphysics of representation is still in charge of how we think about music and about experience in general. Instead of settling for the positivist definition of music as mere sound framed by time, LaFave provides a phenomenology of music that reveals pitch as the ontological counterpart to frequency, and music as a vehicle for understanding how, as Heidegger observed, the Being of “things of value” are invariably grounded in the Being of “things of nature.” Numerous musical examples and a poem by Wallace Stevens illustrate LaFave’s case that hierarchy is intrinsic to this understanding. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy is brought to bear alongside Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology to show that not only music, but reality itself, depends on a play of interlocking hierarchies to effect the nature-value connection, making aesthetics first philosophy.

Lexington Books

Pages: 140 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-5186-1 • Hardback • November 2017 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-4985-5187-8 • eBook • November 2017 • $98.50 • (£76.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Movements / Phenomenology, Philosophy / History & Surveys / General, Philosophy / Continental Philosophy, Philosophy / Aesthetics, Music / Philosophy & Social Aspects

The Sound of Ontology

Music as a Model for Metaphysics

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The Sound of Ontology: Music as a Model for Metaphysics explores connections between Western art music in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and the ideas that dominated philosophy leading up to and during that period. In the process of establishing John Cage as Richard Wagner’s heir via Arnold Schoenberg, the author discovers that the old metaphysics of representation is still in charge of how we think about music and about experience in general. Instead of settling for the positivist definition of music as mere sound framed by time, LaFave provides a phenomenology of music that reveals pitch as the ontological counterpart to frequency, and music as a vehicle for understanding how, as Heidegger observed, the Being of “things of value” are invariably grounded in the Being of “things of nature.” Numerous musical examples and a poem by Wallace Stevens illustrate LaFave’s case that hierarchy is intrinsic to this understanding. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy is brought to bear alongside Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology to show that not only music, but reality itself, depends on a play of interlocking hierarchies to effect the nature-value connection, making aesthetics first philosophy.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 140 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-5186-1 • Hardback • November 2017 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-4985-5187-8 • eBook • November 2017 • $98.50 • (£76.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / Movements / Phenomenology, Philosophy / History & Surveys / General, Philosophy / Continental Philosophy, Philosophy / Aesthetics, Music / Philosophy & Social Aspects

Author

Kenneth LaFave earned his PhD in philosophy at The European Graduate School.

Table of Contents

Prelude
Chapter I: Wagner in the Role of Kant
Chapter II: Schoenberg’s Fatal Step
Chapter III: Interlude: Sic Et Non
Chapter IV: It’s Only Sound: Or, How Nietzsche Foresaw John Cage
Chapter V: Serialism as Event? Or Simulacrum?
Chapter VI: Hearing Tonality Anew (Or Not)
Chapter VII: Blooming, Buzzing Cohesion
Chapter VIII: The Undeniable Subject
Chapter IX: Locating the Thing-In-Itself
Chapter X: The Copernican Revolution (Or Not)
Chapter XI: Intentionality as Value
Chapter XII: The Return of the Thing-In-Itself
Chapter XIII: Finite, Definite, Infinite
Chapter XIV: An Infinite Multiplicity of Hierarchies
Chapter XV: The Razor’s Edge of Ontology
Appendix: IV, the Phantom Tonic
Bibliography
About the Author

The Sound of Ontology

Music as a Model for Metaphysics

Kenneth LaFave

The Sound of Ontology

Music as a Model for Metaphysics

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