MUSIC, PHILOSOPHY, AND MODERNITY

conclusion 397

and others, such as some of the West Coast jazz of the fifties and sixties
where a greater proximity to ‘legitimate’ playing becomes the goal.
These phenomena all involve what should and should not be ‘said’,
and how it should be said, and so connect to related issues in verbal
language. A perspective on language and philosophy which is adequate
to the major issues in modernity must, then, be in a position to take
account of the diversity of human expressions which articulate what
matters to people. Cavell’s reflections on passionate utterance point to
the conclusion that the analytical tradition’s frequent neglect of the top-
ics being examined here has to do with its relegation to insignificance
or indeterminacy of anything that cannot be grasped in terms of what
can be verbally articulated. In my view it is precisely the things which
resist verbal articulation that ought to constitute an important focus of a
philosophy which tries to engage with all dimensions of modern culture.

Music as philosophical expression

InThe Birth of TragedyNietzsche fantasises an interpretation of the last
days of Socrates in support of one of his book’s main arguments:

Often, as he tells his friends when he is in prison, the same dream-figure

repeatedly came to him, who always says the same thing: ‘Socrates, make

music!’ Until his last days he calms himself with the view that his phi-

losophy is the highest art of the Muses, and can’t believe that a divinity

would remind him of that ‘common, popular music’. Finally, in order

completely to appease his conscience in prison, he also agrees to make

the music which he respected so little.

(Nietzsche 2000 : 1 , 82 )

Nietzsche interprets the words of the dream-figure as ‘the only sign
of the limits of logical nature being questionable’. He continues: ‘per-
haps – this is how he [Socrates] must have asked himself – what I do
not find comprehensible does not also immediately lack comprehen-
sibility. Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is
banned. Perhaps art is even a necessary correlative and supplement of
science?’ (ibid.). Nietzsche’s version of the idea of the limits of logic,
which are the limits of the world of appearances, is attached to elements
of the Schopenhauerian metaphysics that we considered in chapters 6
and 7 , and is in some respects open to the same kind of objections.
One consequence of the entanglement of music and philosophy evi-
dent in Nietzsche’s use of Schopenhauer is suggested when Lawrence