162 music, philosophy, and modernity
lives consist of constant transitions between determinate thoughts and
other states, which may not be conceptually determinate, but which
have affective and other significances. He gives the example of poetry:
‘Language consists of the combination of elements which have become
fixed, so it cannot really present what changes in itself, but the poet
forces it to do so in an indirect manner...Here, then, it is not at all
a question of the logical content of language, towards which language
is originally directed’ (ibid.: 641 ). However, the musical aspect of lan-
guage, whose ‘possibility is already originally part of language’ (ibid.:
643 ), is ‘capable of infinite transformation and of hovering multiplicity
because it consists solely of transitions’ (ibid.: 642 ).
Why is it so important for there to be such a means of convey-
ing mobility? The answer has to do with the understanding of self-
consciousness and its relationship to the world. As we have seen,
Schleiermacher does not see this relationship in Cartesian terms: ‘If
we consider man in his specific relationship to the world, then it is just
being (‘Sein’) and he is consciousness (‘Bewusstsein’). But to the extent
to which he is a part of the world he is conscious being (‘bewusstes Sein’)
(so that admittedly the name consciousness is not really appropriate;
one can only oppose the unconscious (‘das Unbewusste’) [i.e. not the
world] to it)’ (Schleiermacher 1931 : 26 ). This connection is necessary
to generate intersubjective knowledge in ‘identical activities’, but it is
also inherently individual. The tension here leads to a version of the
relationship between metaphysics 1 and metaphysics 2.
One of the pivotal factors in Schleiermacher’s whole conception is
that metaphysics 1 and metaphysics 2 cannot be wholly opposed: both sci-
ence and art are primarily forms of human activity. They both depend
on language, which ‘stands in complete indifference between art and
science’ (ibid.: 17 ). Once ‘feeling’ has become determinate it exter-
nalises itself through gesture, and ‘these signs relate to feeling just as
language relates to thinking’ (ibid.: 29 ), so that ‘note and movement’
play the role of language for feeling. Feeling is important because it
‘relates to the specific existence of individuality’ (ibid.: 34 ). At the same
time, even though individuality ‘is reflected in feeling’, ‘it is only com-
prehensible to others via identity’ (ibid.: 35 ). The semantic aspect of
verbal language (which is verbal language’s form of ‘identity’) must
therefore have a counterpart in non-verbal forms like music. In the
same way as words schematise things which are strictly different in order
to make them the possible objects of judgements of identity, the indi-
vidual element of feeling would be mere arbitrary particularity if the