introduction 11the ultimate implication of my stance is that the very idea of a ‘philoso-
phy of music’ is mistaken. This will indeed be what I want to claim, but
that does not render concern with philosophy and music superfluous.
So what is the alternative?
One possibility is to regard the ‘philosophy of music’, not as the
philosophy whose job is conceptually to determine the object ‘music’,
but rather as the philosophy that emerges from music, that is, to inter-
pret the phrase in the subjective, rather than the objective genitive.
Friedrich Schlegel once characteristically asserted that ‘One has tried
for so long to apply mathematics to music and painting; now try it the
other way round’ (Schlegel 1988 : 5 , 41 ). If one substitutes ‘philosophy’
for mathematics, the approach I want to develop begins to emerge.
Schlegel suggests the basic problem for philosophy by the following
remark, which brilliantly encapsulates the problem of philosophical
foundations: ‘Demonstrations in philosophy are just demonstrations in
the sense of the language of the art of military strategy. It is no better
with [philosophical] legitimations than with political ones; in the sci-
ences as well one first of all occupies a terrain and then proves one’s
right to it afterwards (Schlegel 1988 ; 2 , 111 ). Gadamer suggests what
Schlegel’s inversion of the role of mathematics and music points to
when he argues that, although the natural sciences are indispensable
to human survival, ‘this does not mean that people would be able to
solve the problems that face us, peaceful coexistence of peoples and
the preservation of the balance of nature, with science as such. It is
obvious that not mathematics but the linguistic nature of people is
the basis of human civilisation’ (Gadamer 1993 : 342 ). That linguistic
nature relies on forms of communication which cannot all be mapped
out in advance in a theory, and have instead to be engaged in via a con-
stant negotiation which has no foundational certainties. For Gadamer,
encounter with the other in the form of coming to understand their
languages, including the language of music, can tell us more about
what we are than many of the objectifying forms of studying human
behaviour. It is when wedon’tunderstand and have to leave behind
our certainties that we can gain the greatest insights. Given that this
situation is in one sense almost constitutive for music, which we never
understand in a definitive discursive manner, it is worth taking seriously
the idea that such non-understanding might be philosophically very
significant.
The approach to music proposed here seeks to avoid merely con-
firming the philosophical and methodological presuppositions that one