126 music, philosophy, and modernity
points to has no real purchase. At the same time, abstinence, in the
name of musical formalism, from any connections and analogies to
history and philosophy is open to Adorno’s objection that consider-
ing music in terms of ‘the merely phenomenal context of the sounds’
ignores music’s intentional content, which relates it to historical and
social issues. The problem raised by Adorno is how to sustain a philo-
sophical interrogation of music which establishes a critical historical
perspective, whilst taking account of music’s role as a part of modernity
which can be used to interrogate philosophy.
Consideration of Hegel’s account of music can show some of the dif-
ficulties and possibilities here. The key issue is the connection between
music, language, and feeling in relation to the aims of modern philos-
ophy. Hegel’s account in theAestheticsforms part of what has generally
been seen as a philosophical analysis of the arts in the terms of his
system. The editor of the new lecture transcription interprets Hegel,
in contrast, as suggesting a phenomenological approach to the under-
standing of each of the particular arts, rather than as attempting to fit
them into the system (Hegel 2003 : 33 ). Whichever way one interprets
his overall aims with regard to art and philosophy, Hegel’s accounts
of the particular forms of art have to be interpreted in the light of
his claim that ‘art is not the highest manner of expressing the truth’
(ibid.: 5 ). The reasons why have to do with his historical reflections
on art in modern society in comparison to science, law and politics.
These reflections are connected to a philosophical point concerning
the relationship between immediacy and truth. Hegel puts it like this:
‘art is also limited according to its content, has a sensuous material,
and for this reason only a certain stage of truth is capable of being the
content of art’ (ibid.). The factors which most determine the shape of
the modern world are indeed those, like the natural sciences, which
rely on abstraction from sensuous particularity to generate universal
predictive laws, and those which give priority to general legal and other
principles over specific cases. These essential attributes of modernity
mean for Hegel that ‘the science of art’, as opposed to art itself, ‘has
become more of a need than in earlier times’ (ibid.: 6 ). The implication
that art may therefore be coming to an end will later be supported by
the growing uncertainty about the very existence of art brought about
by Duchamp and the avant-garde. In modernity conceptual reflection
becomes more and more an explicit part of aesthetic practice, and
the problematic relationship of art to the culture industry makes the
idea of art as a medium which conveys truth harder to defend. Despite