conclusion 411there are also grounds for considering other ways in which we may
respond to it, which do not involve either taking a firm philosophical
position – which must always await the next argument that may render
it invalid – or regarding the problem as deep and intractable and likely
to generate continuing philosophical debate. Let us therefore briefly
take an example of a specific, live philosophical problem and to see
what the introduction of music does to how we might regard it. We
have encountered the issue of self-consciousness at several points in
the book, and it can shed some light on the questions in the preceding
discussion.^28
The initial reason for linking music and self-consciousness is that
both inherently resist objectification. What can be objectified in music,
i.e. its objective physical existence as script or as sound, is not sufficient
to make something music, and self-consciousness must involve some
sense of that which is not an object, because it can itself be considered
a condition of possibility of objectivity. Self-consciousness’ importance
to the extra-philosophical world derives from the fact that accounts
of self-consciousness have consequences concerning our other self-
descriptions which affect the practical domain. If one buys into evo-
lutionary psychology, for instance, and regards self-consciousness as an
epiphenomenon that is reducible to being a means of self-preservation,
the very fact that this position leads to something like a Hobbesian
picture of the self has political ramifications.^29 If self-consciousness is
regarded, on the other hand, as the basis of self-determination, very dif-
ferent political implications emerge, such as the demand for education
to encourage autonomy rather than blind obedience. A crucial factor
here, given the non-objective status of self-consciousness, is that the
theme of self-consciousness was not an issue during large parts of the
history of philosophy, appearing briefly in Augustine, and only becom-
ing central with Descartes. This non-thematisation of what comes to be
an – or, indeed, at times,the– essential philosophical topic in modernity
has a different significance from the non-thematisation of an object
in the natural realm. While the latter may not have been relevant to
people, may not have been accessible, or may have been mistakenly
subsumed into some other entity, the former only seems to emerge as
such at all in certain contexts. The need to locate the issue historically28 For an extended version of these ideas, see my essay in Grundmann et al. 2004.
29 Future histories of the turn to the Right of the Reagan–Thatcher years and beyond will,
I suspect, reveal that the rise of sociobiology in the public sphere is inseparable from
the contemporaneous ideology of the market.