40 music, philosophy, and modernity
can, like natural languages (and often with much less effort), be com-
prehended by those outside a culture, despite radical cultural differ-
ences. The primary issue in the present context is how music relates
to modernity, and to the accompanying processes of secularisation and
disenchantment of nature by the sciences. Although there is a reli-
gious dimension to Novalis’ thinking, he is actually sometimes closer
to Nietzsche than to the Church. His assertion about music is explicitly
temporalised, and this is in line with his ‘conviction... that precisely
the old lament that everything is transient can become the most joy-
ful of all thoughts’ (ibid.: 433 ). Many other philosophers at the time
regarded music as inferior because of its transient nature, but Novalis’
remarks suggest an alternative way of seeing music and modernity. His
acknowledgement of the finitude of existence leads to a different eval-
uation of how we might attain a meaningful place within things. It is no
coincidence in this respect that the beginning of modernity is accom-
panied both by the rise of new ideas about music and philosophy, and
by the astonishingly rapid development of the capacity for expression
of the temporal art of music itself.
Negative metaphysics?What, then, does all this tell us about music and metaphysics? It will take
the rest of the book really to make a plausible case concerning this, but
consider the following. Herbert Schn ̈adelbach has termed what I am
calling metaphysics 2 ‘negative metaphysics’, ‘the warranted reminder
that discourse does not have complete control of the true and the good:
that there is something here which cannot be anticipated by a method,
but which must show itself and be experienced’ (Schn ̈adelbach 1987 :
171 – 2 ). He associates this idea of ‘metaphysics’ with Kant’s ‘thing in
itself’, Wittgenstein’s ‘the mystical’, Adorno’s ‘non-identity’, and Hei-
degger’s ‘being’. All of these terms stand for what resists being concep-
tualised in the manner that we conceptualise what can be objectively
known. Schn ̈adelbach’s idea can be elucidated as follows. His reason for
talking of ‘negative’ metaphysics relates to Heidegger’s story of meta-
physics. The empirical methods of modern science, which deal with
the contingency of what there is by bringing it under causal laws, can
be seen as replacing positive philosophical conceptions of metaphysics
as a systematic account of the universe. One response of philosophy
is therefore to attach itself to the sciences, at the risk of making itself
redundant. The opposite response can lead to the danger of a turn to