music, freedom, and metaphysics 199with the ways in which music in modernity responds to a world where
traditional certainties of all kinds, including about the nature of self-
conscious existence, are brought into question. Schelling argued that
we do not choose our character, but that this does not exclude our tak-
ing responsibility for our deeds. This situation includes the possibility
of actingagainstour character, and this is part of the reality of a free-
dom which cannot ever be fully grasped. The source of such an action,
which can be either good or evil, need have no ground of explanation.
That is the ‘abyss’ that we can all become aware of when faced with
the possibility of doing something ‘out of character’ in the most radi-
cal sense. My suggestion was that this idea can be connected with the
notion of music as an expression of ‘that which can never, even with
the greatest exertion, be dissolved into understanding’. However much
we explain music in terms of its historical, social and other determina-
tions, that does not account for the very fact of music’s ability to disclose
new ways of being. Such a conception allows one to sustain a notion of
music’s autonomy, without disconnecting music from the world that it
can disclose.
It might seem obvious that Schopenhauer also argues for such an
inversion, but this is not the case, because his theory of freedom
and the Will takes no account of the contingency that is central to
Schelling’s conception. The ‘immediacy of knowledge of one’s own will’
(Schopenhauer 1977 : 2 , 615 ) is, he contends, the source of the con-
cept of freedom. The Will itself is indeed groundless, not being located
in the spatio-temporal causal realm; the will of human individuals is, in
contrast,notgroundless, because they are themselves just appearances
of the Will, which is their ground. Character is therefore actually Will-
determined fate, and, in retrospect, we can, Schopenhauer maintains,
see all our actions, which we thought of as free when we performed
them, as determined by our timeless, Will-derived, intelligible essence.
If a person ‘lived for ever, they would, by dint of the unchangeability
of their character, always for ever act in the same way’ (ibid.: 4 , 595 ).
Heidegger’s idea of modern metaphysics as the objectification of the
freedom of the subject is clearly applicable here. For Schopenhauer
only death gives real freedom, by delivering one from individuation
altogether.
Schopenhauer’s argument leads to a vicious circle. Whatever one
does must, in retrospect, be interpreted in terms of the a priori meta-
physical claim that the individual’s will is subject to their timeless intel-
ligible character. No empirical evidence can refute this claim, so it