music, freedom, and metaphysics 197Music is therefore ‘immediately an image of the Will itself and so is the
metaphysical to everything physical in the world, the thing in itself to
every appearance’ (ibid.). It must be animageof the Will because the
whole point of these contentions is to arrive at a philosophical attitude
in which the torment to which our dependence on the Will gives rise
can be avoided. Were the feelings occasioned by music to be real feel-
ings, we would still be subject to the dissatisfaction inherent in the Will’s
self-manifestation. The argument is, though, implausible. How do we
know to connect the pleasurable experience of music’s presentation of
the tormented striving of the Will with an intuitive sense of the Will,
if the former is completely devoid of any recognisable affective
‘content’? The ultimate consequence of these ideas is Schopenhauer’s
investment in the Buddhist idea of self-negation as the true means of
transcending Will-bound existence, music allowing only a temporary
respite from this existence. However, this investment raises further dif-
ficulties.
Schopenhauer’s contentions about the Will’s independence of the
principle of sufficient reason derive from the tradition of Kant and
Schelling considered at the beginning of the chapter. The crux of
the relationship between Schopenhauer and his predecessors lies in
how freedom is conceived. As we saw, philosophical attempts to under-
stand freedom can be regarded as inherently paradoxical, because they
involve the performative contradiction of claiming to define what is
constitutively resistant to being defined. For Kant and Hegel freedom
must be thought of in terms of self-determination according to inter-
subjective norms. However, what Schelling talked about in terms of the
‘rule-less’ does seem to play a role in the capacity to transcend or reject
existing norms, at the risk of the dangers – as well as opportunities
and achievements – associated with some of the disturbing aspects of
modernity.
The history of the most significant modern music involves a ten-
sion between intersubjectively generated norms which determine the
boundaries of musical practice, and the growing realisation that few, if
any, of those norms are necessarily binding for all music. What the music
which pushes the boundaries signifies depends on the contexts in which
it occurs, and this is part of what vitiates Schopenhauer’s approach. He
famously maintains that the ‘composer reveals the innermost essence
of the world and expresses the deepest wisdom in a language which
his reason does not understand’ (ibid.: 1 , 327 ). Our intuitive, affective
awareness of the fundamental nature of things cannot be expressed con-
ceptually, and so must be articulated in music (which already involves