Schopenhauer's Views on Music The purpose of this rese

The purpose of this research is to examine Arthur Schopenhauer's views on music. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the philosophical-aesthetic temperament of Schopenhauer in the scheme of his concepts of will and idea, and then to discuss in particular his views of music. In particular, the manner in which he connects the metaphysical enterprise (and his philosophical method) regarding human experience to the form and content of music will be analyzed, with a view toward showing how his conception of music is connected with a conception of an innate and universal language.

To appreciate Schopenhauer's views on music, it is useful to appreciate something about his philosophical views more generally. The philosophical themes that recur in his work revolve around the concepts of will and idea. Schopenhauer assigns the term will to the "only real, metaphysical cosmic being . . . which comprises both mental acts of the human individual and the drive, urge or instinctive force of the entire organic world." Dagobert Runes, "Arthur Schopenhauer," Treasury of Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 1085.

Idea is associated with the the universal subjective experience of human affections, so that all phenomenal reality is subject to human experience: "All that in any way belongs or can belong to the world is inevitably thus conditioned through the subject, and exists only for the subject. The world is idea." Arthur Schopenhauer, "W

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ce reaching for affiliation with metaphysical being-in-itself. This argues music as objective essence, without condition, preceding human experience but more important, informing and resolving the vicissitudes of rational human experience and pointing it in the direction of profound subjective insight and feeling. If music indeed has essential power, it is beyond reason, beyond even the limits of human experience, yet reaching direct human experience of essence itself. This is what Schopenhauer means when he describes music as a universal language that "surpasses even that of the perceptible world itself." Ibid., 486. Symons notes that Richard Wagner's musical, operatic, and theatrical ideas owed much to Schopenhauer's idea about the universalistic quality of music to "express in her universal voice . . . not merely the joy, passion, or despair of the individual, but joy itself, or passion or despair, raised to infinity. . . . Do we not already see music, as Schopenhauer saw it, as 'an idea of the world' and the musician [composer] 'speaking the highest wisdom in a language his reason does not understand'?" Arthur Symons, "The Ideas of Richard Wagner," The Theory of the Modern Stage, ed. Eric Bentley (Baltimore: Pelican/Pengu

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