hegel, philosophy, and music 131(ibid.). Note how Brandom’s interpretation of the move from immedi-
acy and mediation to mediated immediacy echoes Hegel’s account. The
note which was ‘previously abstract [in Hegel’s sense of ‘immediate’,
‘unconnected’, where the ‘con-crete’ is what has ‘grown-together’ in a
web of determinations], determination-less sounding becomes a word –
a sound/note (‘To n’), whose sense/meaning (‘Sinn’) is to express ideas,
thoughts’ (ibid.). The specific material of the word is now indifferent,
because what counts is its ability to serve as the means forGeistto express
thoughts, which it does via its inferential relations to other words. The
animation and rendering intelligible of inert matter in art is therefore
repeated in the genesis of meaning. Meaning does not rely on specific
sensuous material, because mind can employ any material that can take
on a form as a sign, from noises to electric charges, and so on.
The upshot for our concerns of this conception is best considered
via Hegel’s analysis of music later in the text. However, certain obvious
questions already suggest themselves, not least about the level at which
the conception is to be understood. Is it, for example, an anthropolog-
ical conception intended to account for the origin of language, or an
account of the conditions of possibility of meaning, of the kind that
Brandom elaborates, or a historical observation about music in moder-
nity, which evidently does not have the determining effects on the social
world that the language-based sciences do, etc.? If it is the latter, why is
it that at much the same time other philosophers, like Novalis, Schleier-
macher, and Schopenhauer, and musicians, like Beethoven and Schu-
bert, probably invest more heavily in music than anyone had done in
the previous history of Western culture? One reason for this investment
has to do precisely with a perceivedfailureof language to communicate
fundamental aspects of modern existence. In this sense the idea of the
‘degradation’ of the note suggests that an element of repression may be
involved in the genesis of the signifier. The main issue in this context
becomes apparent with regard to the temporality of the note and its
link to feeling.
In the section on music in theLectures, Hegel characterises the audi-
tory element of music as ‘appearance which drifts away, abstract sub-
jectivity which remains subjective in its expression, nothing external
remains at rest, but rather immediately disappears as something exter-
nal’ (ibid.: 262 ). Whereas the meaning of the word – whose material also
disappears – is sustained against fading away by the idealisation inherent
in thought, the musical note is seen as attached to the transient con-
tingency of feelings. In other arts, such as sculpture and painting, the