180 music, philosophy, and modernityIf human freedom to do good or evil (evil being construed as know-
ing what is right and willing what is wrong) is still a topic which can
validly be discussed,^11 and causal explanation in terms of ‘instinct’ or
socialisation – or even the ‘unconscious’ – is not adequate to the issue,^12
because it empties the moral terms of their content, then exploring
what Schelling terms the ‘rule-less’ can offer interesting perspectives.
The problem lies in specifying the nature of such exploration, because
it cannot rely solely on explanatory resources. For Schelling the explo-
ration is associated with madness, and yet also with the possibility of
new creative potential. Such potential can in turn become pathological
if it is not channelled into forms which are not just forms of concep-
tual ordering.^13 This might sound merely ‘Romantic’, in the bad sense
associated with notions like ‘original genius’, as that which functions
outside all established rules. However, that would neglect those dimen-
sions of human existence which take one beyond what can be thought
about discursively into the realm where some other kind of response
is required. Many kinds of musical and other art therapy rely precisely
on non-verbal means of articulating and expressing traumas which oth-
erwise render the person who is subjected to them speechless. These
means can then enable speech, but they seem to be a prior condition
of the return of the sort of speech that enables life to continue.
The interest during the Romantic period and since in the dangers
and insights associated with the power exercised by music can, then, be
illuminated by Schelling’s reflections, whether his overall philosophical
position is ultimately defensible or not. The key point is that he does
not give complete precedence either to the natural or to the inten-
tional realm, these being inextricably connected to each other without
being reducible to each other: the material and mental are ‘identical’,
as the predicates of being (see Frank 1991 ). This idea can be con-
nected to music via consideration of rhythm. Although dependent on
occurrences in the physical realm, rhythm cannot be rhythm unless it11 One does not need here to think in terms of good and evil as metaphysical ‘forces’. The
use of moral vocabulary in the coordination and evaluation of social life allows one to
think in terms of evil in this sense.
12 These factors may in most cases be the dominant ones, but there are cases where expla-
nation in such terms cannot get at what is most important about the role of the ethical
and the aesthetic in human life.
13 E. T. A. Hoffmann’s figure of the musician Kreisler and the real historical figure of
Schumann, who adopted Hoffmann’s figure as the motivation for one of his greatest
compositions,Kreisleriana, regard music as both essential to their precarious mental
health and a potential threat to it.