198 music, philosophy, and modernity
the problem of how we can understand the form without any of the
content). At the same time, Schopenhauer’s arguments about human
freedom actually contradict this claim because they rely on a discursive
metaphysical argument which makes music irrelevant to his philosoph-
ical case. He admits that what he says about music ‘assumes and estab-
lishes a relationship of music as a representation (‘Vorstellung’) to that
which essentially never can be a representation’ (ibid.: 1 , 323 ), namely
the Will. How, then, is his position to be interpreted, given that it relies
on something essentially non-empirical?
Robert Wicks contends that the argument about the Will should ‘not
be understood as a traditional metaphysical theory which purports to
describe the unconditional truth. It should rather be understood as
an expression of the human perspective on the world, which, as an
embodied individual, we typically cannot avoid.’^22 One has to wonder,
though, what the relationship between the awareness of the limitation
of our perspective and the idea of an absolute conception could be
for Schopenhauer. How can we even conceive of the latter, if all we
have is the former? To do so would seem to require a regulative idea
of unconditional truth, but Schopenhauer does not talk in such terms.
He appeals instead to the intuition of the Will itself, which must have
absolute status: even ‘relative’ appearances are themselves produced
by the Will, which is their absolute ground. He claims, for example,
in his reflections on morality and freedom that the Will is ‘free, it is
all-powerful’ (ibid.: 2 , 438 ). His admission that he cannot prove his
contentions makes his appeal to the intuitive awareness offered by music
all the more central to his arguments. However, if we consider what he
says about freedom in relation to music, the aporias in his position
become apparent.
Schelling’s reflections on the will and freedom were – as indeed are
Schopenhauer’s – concerned to come to new terms with the opposi-
tion between freedom and necessity that is brought about by Kant’s
division between things in themselves and causally determined appear-
ances. Schelling’s position is interesting because it can be interpreted
as sustaining an essential contingency in the idea of human freedom,
which is connected to the contingency of being itself. This means that
Schelling’s position does not necessarily constitute just another ver-
sion of Heidegger’s idea of modern metaphysics as the ‘subjectification
of being’ by the subject. Instead, his ideas can be seen as resonating
22 Wicks http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum 2003 /entries/schopenhauer/.