204 music, philosophy, and modernity
‘the most abstract one can think of, namely that ofsensuous geniality’
(ibid.: 59 ). This is explained by the text’s treatment of the relation-
ship between the sensuous and the spiritual, which underpins the rela-
tionship between the aesthetic and the ethical. The argument has a
historical element that is based on a Hegelian dialectical approach.
With Christianity the sensuous becomes a ‘principle, a power’ (ibid.:
64 ), precisely because it is supposed to be excluded by Christianity.
Before that, in Greek culture, the sensuous is immediately integrated
into the realm of the soul: ‘Now if I think of the sensuous-erotic as
a principle, as a force, a realm (determined by spirit to the extent
precisely that it denies and excludes it), I think of it as concentrated
in oneindividual: and straight away the idea ofsensuous-erotic genial-
ityoccurs to me’ (ibid.: 67 ). The immediate expression of this idea,
which the author contrasts with its mediated expression in language,
where ‘it is subordinated to ethical determinations’ (ibid.), is music.
Music is ‘the medium of that of which Christianity only speaks in order
to negate it... In other words music is thedemonic’ (ibid.). The
demonic is the power of the sensuous which emerges when the sen-
suous takes on an independent existence, rather than being integrated
into a form of life. It emerges, therefore, when, as Don Giovanni does,
an individual lives their life in terms of the sensuous as a principle,
and so can instantiate the principle. The significance of this way of life
depends, of course, on its being lived against the ethical demands of
Christianity.
These contentions rely on a short-circuit between what the author
insists is the essence of music – he does admittedly grant that it can have
other significances – and the figure who represents a version of the idea
that freedom is dangerous. Don Giovanni does in fact reflect one aspect
of what we considered in Schelling’s account of freedom. His repeated
‘No!’ to the demand for penitence at the end of the opera is the sort of
thing meant by Schelling when he talks of ‘evil’, namely self-assertion
in the knowledge that one is wrong. However, the question is how this
element of the drama relates to the music of the opera, with its some-
times disturbing mix of moods and styles, and its striking combination
of dramatic intensity, lyricism, and comic elements.Either–Orgives a
fascinating, but restricted, account of the opera, which suggests once
again how philosophy can diminish music in terms of its own agenda.
The interpretation of Don Giovanni’s link to music is based on the
idea of the ethical in relation to the aesthetic. This relationship is one
of the stages in terms of which Kierkegaard evaluates human existence,