conclusion 417when I sayhinenithere is no “said”’ (ibid.: 38 – 9 ). What I am in such
presentation is an openness to the other, not something that could be
captured in what I could say about myself or what could be said about
me. Simon Critchley talks of Levinasian ‘saying’ as ‘a verbal and possibly
also non-verbal ethical performance...aperformativedoingthat can-
not be reduced to a propositional description’ (ibid.: 18 ). Music, as a
‘performative doing’, relates to the need for ways of being human which
inherently resist what could be said about them propositionally. This
does not mean that there is no musical equivalent of the ‘said’, which
functions much as many automatised forms of language do, such that,
in Adorno’s terms, convention takes over from expression. However,
the desire for music to be more than this lies behind much of the sig-
nificance of music for philosophy explored in the preceding chapters.
At present the dominant forces in philosophy are still mainly focused on
‘the said’, to the point where even countenancing what may be missed
by this focus is often regarded as philosophically disreputable. The his-
tory of music’s entanglement with philosophy suggests that this attitude
may be seriously mistaken.