Apollo, Music, and Cross-Cultural Rationality

Apollo, Music, and Cross-Cultural Rationality
Author(s): Kathleen Marie Higgins

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 42, No. 4, Mt. Abu Regional East-West Philosophers'
Conference, "Culture and Rationality" (Oct., 1992), pp. 623-641
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1399672 .
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APOLLO, MUSIC, AND CROSS-CULTURAL

RATIONALITY
KathleenMarieHiggins
"Reason," like other abstract notions, is imagined differently by members

of different cultures. The yogic view that mind interferes with spiritual
insight and practice contrasts with the Western view that reason is the
ground of insight and the source of human capacity. The Ifalukpeople of
the southwest Pacific consider the experience of justifiable anger not only
reasonable but a basis for gaining moral stature.' Emotion in the Western
philosophical tradition has generally been treated as an obstacle to both
reason and moral practice (whether or not these two concepts are
theoretically conjoined). Contemporary Anglo-American ethicists, drawing on a long-standing view of British philosophy, contend that to be
rational is to be atomistically self-interested. Such a notion of rationality
would be thought neither reasonable nor appealing in China, where a
sense of belonging to one's social group is seen as essential for happiness.
Western societies-specifically those of Europe and North America
-tend to attribute their "successes" (evidenced in technology and material production) to their developed reliance on rationality. In addition, the
West tends to consider its own ideas about reason to be universal and
uncontroversial, analyzing the divergent perspectives of other societies
to be less "rational,"even superstitious. The Western view of rationality
is bound up with images, but most Westerners have forgotten that this is
so.
Being a member of a Western society myself, I intend to explore the
imagistic character of rationality that I have inherited. Ironically, the
history of the concept in the West grows out of sources that are both
obscured in the modern West and in accordance with certain themes
that are common in non-Western culture. I shall argue that Western
rationality emerges from aesthetic experience, and that any adequate
conception of reason must situate it within the context of an aesthetically
experienced world.
Associate Professorof
Philosophyat the
Universityof Texas
at Austin
Quirks in the Western Conception of Rationality

The pride that Western philosophy takes in rationality has been
historically long-lived. From Socrates through analytic philosophy, rigorous reasoning has struck the West as a warrant for self-admiration. This
PhilosophyEast& West
self-assessment might be challenged by the recent American study that Volume 42, Number4
suggests that Americans tend to attribute rationality to men more than October 1992
to women, and to expect a good-looking man to be more rational than 623-641
one who is not. So adamant has been the high evaluation of reason over
? 1992
other modes of encounter with the world that Western philosophy has
by Universityof
almost eclipsed debate about what rationality amounts to. And yet HawaiiPress
623

Western philosophy itself has produced diverse conceptions of reason

over the course of its history, conceptions that do not obviously support
one another.
The Enlightenment's view of reason remains predominant in contemporary Western philosophy. Despite Hegel's effort to temporalize reason
-or at least to insist that our efforts to achieve complete reason are
essentially bound up with time and history-the Western perspective
continues to take reason to be an enduring human capacity, characterized by objective reasoning divorced from personal biases of all sorts. The
Enlightenment presupposed that this capacity could be activated by any
human being. Kant even went so far as to insist that reason gives human
beings their dignity, and that we have moral obligations to others precisely because they have this faculty.
This Enlightenment view of rationality, say its critics, effaces voices
that are different, taking the perspective of the white Western male to be
the universal human perspective. Moreover, the Kantian conviction that
rationality is the basis for human dignity encourages differential respect
toward individuals and societies based on the degree of "rationality"they
exhibit. I find this critique to be compelling. Yet I am convinced that the
problem is not so much with the narrow-mindedness of the Enlightenment, but with our contemporary reception of its insights. Too often,
contemporary Western philosophers simplistically acquiesce in the Enlightenment's sense of what rationality is supposed to involve (for example, detachment from sensual desire or emotional orientation) without
the Enlightenment's faith that rationality can facilitate universal human
understanding. The Enlightenment's conviction was that reason could
adjudicate disputes arising from human difference by appealing to the
intellectual basis for the experience that all human beings shared.
We heirs of the Enlightenment, by contrast, too often take rationality
to be both the royal road to true understanding and the property of a
who are properly trained to disregard
particular class of people-those
emotion in favor of disinterested observation and manipulation. If only
certain societies produce individuals who can easily be described in this
manner, goes this outlook, then those societies are more rational (or more
"developed") than others. This construal of rationality is overly simplistic;
even the Enlightenment, through Kantian theory, acknowledged that
reason could and should recognize its own inherent limitations. But
this modesty in rationality is seldom exhibited by the Enlightenment's
intellectual descendents.
Besides forgetting that reason should recognize its own limits, contemporary Western spokespersons for the power of rationality tend to
imagine that rationality is completely transparent-that it does not involve aesthetic or other "nonrational" expectations of its outcome and
PhilosophyEast& West that it does not utilize aesthetic principles in its own methodology.
624

Ironically, Western logicians pursue "elegant" formulas, and most Western philosophers believe that "Ockham's razor" is a fundamental instrument of rational method. Even the Anglo-American philosophical
preference for numerical or symbolically expressed formulations reflects
judgments of taste: that the precise is more valuable than the imprecise,
that idealization does not significantly distort the matter under inquiry,
that translating particular relationships into standardized symbolism renders their patterns more comprehensible, and so on.
Such judgments of taste in the philosophical arena reflect the tastes
of Western culture more generally. Western culture is charmed by the
abstract method that it credits for making it wealthy, technologically
powerful, and "modern": the method of mathematics. Mathematics,
since the ancient Greeks, has been considered by both philosophers and
Western culture at large to be paradigmatically rational. The ironies in
this image of pure rationality abound. Theoretical mathematicians, while
steeped in rigorous procedures, often credit intuition or "a knack" for
their theoretical discoveries. The burgeoning area of mathematics that
endeavors to model "chaos" might be described as attempting to "rationalize" the irrational, but it nonetheless recognizes important ways in
which everyday rationality fails to represent the phenomena of our world
accurately. Yet in the popular Western imagination, numbers are taken
to be testaments of truth. "Nine out of ten doctors recommend" is a
slogan that successfully sells over-the-counter medical products. Poll
results manipulate election outcomes. The number of daily financial
transactions is seen as a determinant of a nation's wealth. Our Western
tendency is to trust the premises of our reasoning as secure if they are
statistically supported, even though an enduringly popular book tells us
"How to Lie with Statistics."
The perverse roles that numbers have assumed in everyday Western
life are reflected as well in academic fields, including philosophy. Mathematical models are utilized to establish what would count as correctly
utilitarian in the "real world" in which people do not universally choose
the "rational" course of action. Computers, which operate on a binary
numerical system, are for many philosophers a paradigm of rationality:
computers reason "better" than human beings, and if human intelligence
does not easily submit to being artifically reproduced, that is because
human beings are not sufficiently rational. Game theory, developed by
probabilistic mathematicians, is taken by still other philosophers to be a
"rational"grounding for ethical decision making.
All of this indicates that numbers themselves serve a metaphorical if
not a fetishistic function in the West. Our veneration of numbers and
abstract formulas stems from our cultural conviction that mathematics is
the model of rationality. We refer our intellectual methodologies to this
model to determine their rationality. Our judgment of what is rational, KathleenMarieHiggins
625

then, amounts to an aesthetic judgment, based on an image of what is

valuable. We recognize rationality by means of an aesthetic image.
The aesthetic image that the West employs deliberately excludes
essential elements of human experience. When we judge that mathematical moves are rational, we trust them to resist irrational distortion,
particularly that produced by the emotions, the appetites, and the momentum of individual biographies. The consequence is that our rational
investigations do not appear compatible with concerns stemming from
these dimensions of life. Insofar as we intend to approach a problem
rationally, we are ignoring such considerations. But we ought to ask
whether our sense of "rational investigation" is really, in every case, a
proper approach to our problems. Ought a mathematical outcome, for
instance, determine the extent to which we should contribute money to
the poor?2
Perhaps philosophers and other members of the Western intellectual
elite should take a clue from popular culture. A currently popular book
in the United States attempts to construct analogies for human experience on the basis of recent work done in chaos theory. This project does
not attempt to build analogies on the basis of quantitative accuracy or
symbolic formalization. Instead, it takes certain insights of chaos theory
as suggestive metaphors for human experience. From my point of view,
this is a more "rational" appropriation of mathematics than is game
theory or statistical utilitarianism in ethics. I base this claim on my conviction that any conception of rationality which always privileges the
quantifiable over the nonquantifiable, or which insists that emotional detachment always enhances rationality, is impoverished-impoverished
because it methodologically excludes from its purview the biological and
affective dimensions of human experience.
Our emblems of "pure rationality"-abstract mathematics and its
such impovertechnological counterpart, the computer-encourage
of
ished conceptions. A richer conception
rationality requires a different
metaphorical image. I propose an image that accords with the thinking
of many cultures, including that of the pre-Enlightenment West. The
image I have in mind is music. Music is rational, for it is constructed by
means of human reasoning and is an outgrowth of human efforts to make
systematic sense of the world. Nevertheless, music fuses the "rational"(in
the Enlightenment sense) with the other human characteristics involved
in our experience of the world: our senses and appetites, our emotions,
our awareness of temporality, and our spirituality. Music serves as an
image of rationality functioning in context, the context of human living.
In making this claim, I draw support from the theorizing of Friedrich
Nietzsche, who in turn builds his conception of rationality on models that
he observes in ancient Creek thought. A critic of the Enlightenment,
Nietzsche observes that the ancient Greeks did not characterize rational&
West
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ity as either a universal human faculty or a goal achieved through sacrificing the experiences of the body or the emotions. Instead, the Greeks
focused on two quite different models of reason: reason as the standard
of measure, and reason as a radiant image.
Pre-Enlightenment Models of Rationality
The association of reason with measure-and indeed with numbers
generally-was an innovation of Pythagoras and his school of thinkers.
Pythagoras believed that number was the fundamental language of reality. To understand mathematics, then, was to penetrate beneath shifting
appearances to the fundamental patterns of the real. The Pythagoreans
took the practical power human beings achieved by means of measure
as evidence that number provided the secret code to the truth about the
world.
The idea that measuring is the art of rationally investigating reality is
reflected in the English relationship between the word "rational"and the
term "ratio." Rationality, in the image that we have inherited from the
Pythagoreans is the art of measure and true proportion. Linked to this
Pythagorean image from the beginning was the idea that informs modern
science: that our investigations of number could allow us to determine
the ground of being. This Pythagorean "rationality" has other overtones
as well. As the cultivated power of an elite initiate, Pythagorean rationality was not conceived as a universal human faculty. Instead, it was
a means of differentiating insiders from outsiders. So strongly did the
Pythagoreans feel about maintaining this differentiation that they swore
themselves to secrecy with regard to the mathematical mysteries that
were central to their school.
Plato was himself a member of the Pythagorean elite, but he is
responsible for another, in some ways contrary, conception of rationality.
This conception sees reason as an illuminating and integrating power of
vision, which can glimpse the entire configuration of reality in an instant.
I see Plato's conception of reason as illuminating vision as somewhat
contrary to the Pythagorean notion because the instantaneous character
of the rational vision is not, like Pythagorean rationality, either methodical
or the consequence of the application of rules and standards. The only
way to embrace both, as Plato does, is to give each its moment. One
learns rationality, the methodology of numerical relations, in the hope
that the spark of reason will at some point ignite an insight that transcends the method. One labors through time in the faith that one's
receptivity may be graced by vision, the power that allows one to see
beyond time.
Plato's conception of rationality-as a method for transcending time
within time-is guilty of its own pretensions, not the least of which is the
idea that time can be cancelled. Yet it does suggest aspects of human
627

rationality that the Enlightenment ignores. Among these is the idea that
reason involves a kind of cultivated awareness that is humble before its
objects. Not awe at ourselves, but awe before the structure of the world,
is the outcome of such rationality.
Another contrast with Enlightenment rationality is Plato's portrayal
of reasoning as involving the interaction of diverging points of view. The
dialectical method of Plato's Socrates is an activity that the dialogues
themselves rehearse for the reader. Although ultimate consensus was
Plato's ideal, his portrayed method for achieving it acknowledged human
difference and even encouraged its articulation.
Significantly,both the Pythagoreans and Plato saw music as the point
of departure for their respective images of rationality. Pythagoras became
convinced that numerical proportions were coded messages about reality because of his experiments with vibrating strings. He observed that
strings whose lengths were related by simple proportions sounded in
harmony when plucked. The reality that sang back to Pythagoras in his
numerical investigations was the aesthetic and musical reality of experienced auditory harmony.
Plato, similarly, conceived of insight into the forms of music as the
precondition for a life regulated by harmony and reason, and therefore
fundamental to proper education.
Musicaltrainingis a more potent instrumentthan any other,because rhythm
and harmonyfindtheirway into the inwardplaces of the soul, on which they
mightilyfasten, impartinggrace, and makingthe soul of him who is rightly
educated graceful,or of him who is ill-educatedungraceful.3
The two conceptions of reason that I have associated here with the
Pythagoreans and Plato were both associated with Apollo, god of measure and order as well as the sun god, who made vision possible. In light
of Apollo's synthesis of fundamental themes, Nietzsche turned to Apollo
as an image of what rationality meant to the ancient Greeks.
Nietzsche's Characterization of Rationality
Nietzsche's consideration of rationality arises in connection with his
interest in Greek tragedy. He argues that Greek tragedy was a synthesis of
two aesthetic principles, which he associates with Apollo and Dionysus.
Thus, from the beginning, Nietzsche situates the Apollonian, rational,
principle in a context that includes a nonrational principle as well.
Apollo, as Nietzsche initially characterizes him, is associated with the
images of dreams. In this connection, Apollo has an ambiguous relationship to truth. On the one hand, dreams, like Apollo, are "soothsaying"4revelatory of reality. Yet dreams are ambiguous and require interpretation. The images of dreams can also be so captivating as to obscure their
PhilosophyEast&West distance from or idealization of reality.
628

The implication of this ambivalent character of the images through

which the rational vision proceeds has been more recently suggested by
Kenneth Burke:
A terminology is a kind of photographic"screen"which will "let through"
some perceptions and "filterout" others. I began to suspect that this fact
about the nature of "terministicscreens" is the sheerly technical or "logologicial"counterpartof the theologicalformula,"believethat you may understand"(crede ut intelligas).Technically,the choice of a terminologyin terms
of which to state one's propositionis equivalentto the "act of faith"(credere)
throughwhich one can arriveat understanding(intelligere).5
One's adoption of a terminology not only obscures some things while
it illumines others. It also is nonrationally grounded. The nonrational
character of the terms with which rationality proceeds is evident in
Pythagoras' experiments with strings. The length of the first string he
utilized was arbitraryinsofar as his work was concerned; he arrived at his
insights regarding the rational basis of harmony only after a standard
length had been chosen. The entire edifice of the metrical system of
measure similarly depends on the prior selection of a precise length to
serve as the standard meter. And yet the initial selection was not dictated
by reasoning, but by fiat.
Through the image of Apollo, Nietzsche also indicates that the image
of rationality that we have inherited from the Greeks is fundamentally
aesthetic. Apollo is associated with beauty. Represented as the idealized
beautiful man, Apollo is compellingly attractive. Our appreciation of the
images associated with Apollo is reflected in our response: we experience
beauty with joy. Nietzsche goes on to argue that those most enamored
of rationality as the means for penetrating reality are fundamentally
motivated, not by a quest for truth, but by the aesthetic joy involved in
their activity.6
Apollo, as the sun god, is also associated with the visual beauty that
the sun's illumination makes available to us. The sun enables us to
recognize order in our world, and apprehensible order is a characteristic
of beauty. This relationship between beauty and order is reflected in
Apollo's being the deity of both. Beauty is also characterized by true, or
rational, proportion, with the consequence that the most perfect beauty
can be recognized by means of measure (a point that Plato, in particular,
emphasizes). Yet again, the ambiguous relationship of the Apollonian
principle to truth is evident. True beauty is evinced by measure; yet the
radiance of the sun can transfigure imperfectly ordered objects into
apparently stunning beauties.
These various powers associated with Apollo (and others as wellsuch as the power to write and to heal) are among the feats that the West
points to when it sings its own praises. The methods of science and the
629

technology to which science has given birth are touted as indices of the
tremendous power that rationality can confer. Nietzsche contends that
this attitude originated in Greek thought as well, specifically in the philosophy of Socrates. Socrates, he argues, gave birth to "the unshakable faith
that thought, using the thread of causality, can penetrate the deepest
abysses of being, and that thought is capable not only of knowing being
but even of correcting it."7
The difficulty with this faith is that it is an illusion. Apollo's powers are
limited. Being is neither fully fathomable nor correctable. The psychological reward for this Socratic faith, as for many other faiths, is a sense of
security. The methods of rationality, Socratic philosophy intimates, can
make us secure from the dangers associated with the irrational. But
Socrates was forgetting insights that earlier Greeks had recognized in
their worship of Apollo-that Apollo needs an irrational complement,
the god Dionysus.
Dionysus, god of sex, frenzy, music, and abandonment, represents,
according to Nietzsche, aspects of human experience that upon which
Apollo depends. Apollo stands for the beautiful image that affords us both
knowledge and joy. But the images that Apollo summarizes are lifeless if
they are not beheld from the standpoint that Dionysus represents, a
standpoint of desire, concern, and involvement in the reality that Apollo
allows us to see.
The Dionysian principle is far from a principle of safety. Dionysus
encourages the individual to abandon him- or herself to forces flowing
through the environment: music, erotic desire, communion with whole
throngs of human beings. Dionysus is even an apotheosis of the tragic
elements in human life: death, undeserved and excessive suffering,
and the perverse results of chance when it meddles in human affairs.
Dionysus, torn to bits, suffers, dies, and is reborn. This saga of Dionysus
represents the whole cycle of life renewing itself, a cycle that requires
death-the sacrifice of the individual-as the means by which life begins
again.
Nietzsche argues that Greek tragedy, with its Dionysian themes,
allowed the ancient Greeks to confront their own mortality, and to
transfigure the horror involved by means of the theater's Apollonian
images, images that allowed even the terrible to appear beautiful and
orderly. The psychological power of Greek tragedy depended on this
conjunction of the Apollonian with the Dionysian. Human beings are able
to face the disturbing features of life that Dionysus reflects only by means
of Apollonian idealization and beautification. Dionysian insights must be
balanced with Apollonian incitements to take joy in life's beauty despite
the suffering that it entails.
But Apollonian beauty, Nietzsche insists, is dependent on Dionysian
East
&
West
Philosophy
grounds as well. The vital, emotionally invested experience of life itself
630

motivates human beings to express themselves and to transfigure their

world with beauty. Only because we are participants in life do we have
projects that rationality might assist. Unless connected to our living
concerns, which relate us to our environment, our rational pursuits are
unmotivated. Moreover, if we trust in the sufficiency of rationality to
steer our lives, we occupy a precarious state of unpreparedness for the
unrationalizable tragedies that threaten every individual's life.8
Thus, Nietzsche concludes that Socrates has been a bad influence
on the West's conception of rationality. Socrates' campaign against the
a trunirrational-and against the Dionysian principle-encouraged
and
from
emotion
is
divorced
that
cated notion of rationality
living
concerns. Socrates even attempted to undercut the imagistic richness of
rationality understood through the metaphor of Apollo. He preferred
instead that the clarity of firmly defined concepts reign as the guiding
image of rationality.
Nietzsche may exaggerate the extent to which Socrates deserves
exclusive credit or blame for these transformations. In effect, Nietzsche
treats Socrates as a proto-Enlightenment figure. This seems rather extreme in light of the fact that Plato, Socrates' student, characterized
rationality as beautiful, radiant, and inspiring. Nietzsche emphasizes the
difference between the two figures by stressing the tensions Plato experienced as an artist under the sway of Socrates.9 But, in general, Nietzsche
criticizes Plato along with Socrates, contending that both demanded
conceptual clarification of everything, including art. Nietzsche caricatures. Nevertheless, the shifts in the West's image of rationality that
Nietzsche associates with Socrates and Plato do indicate tendencies that
have become hypertrophied in the modern Western conception of reason. And he rightly observes that the cost has been the loss in our
conception of reason of its place in a full, vital life.
Rationality in Context
By insisting that Apollo needs Dionysus as a complement, Nietzsche
reminds us of the many dimensions of our experience that even our most
vibrant image of rationality leaves out. Dionysus reminds us of time, the
power of change and flux, as opposed to the fixed concepts that our
rational methods seek. "Rationality,"as we typically understand it, leads
us to firm, justified convictions, to be used as bricks in constructing
scientific and other scholarly edifices. Dionysus reminds us that for all
their usefulness, these images falsify our lived experience by presenting
it as something static and fixed. Life, by contrast, flows with the force
of a voluminous river, continually rearranging and reconfiguring its
components.
Dionysus also reminds us that our image of rationality does not
reflect one of the most obvious features of our experience: the fact that
631

it is always embodied experience. We model the rational as though our

bodies' contribution to experience were always a mere impediment, and
an impediment that our minds could suspend at will. Dionysus reminds us
that even if our model facilitates our apprehension of significant features
of our world, the value of our insights depends on our integrating them
into the projects determined by our practical, embodied circumstances.
Third,Dionysus reflects the limitation of our rational efforts to clearly
define and differentiate features of our experience into separate entities,
and to conceive of ourselves as disinterested observers. A significant part
of our experience involves the breakdown of our conceptualization of
reality as fragmented and ourselves as detached. Dionysus represents the
abandonment of our detached perspective in favor of our sense of
ourselves as being in union with the rest of our world.
All three of these features of the Dionysian complement to rationality
figure prominently in music, the art form that Nietzsche associates with
Dionysus. Music causes us to experience temporality, to celebrate our
embodied natures, and to feel drawn into connection with the larger
environment. Ifwe consider our experience of music, then, we are aware
of what the Western notion of rationality leaves out. As musical beings,
we cannot be merely rational beings, at least as the Western tradition
conceives of rationality.
But, significantly, Nietzsche observes that Apollo, like Dionysus, is
also a musical god.10Although Dionysus is linked to the full-bodied music
of the aulos, the double-flute-like instrument that drove its listeners to
revelry if not madness, Apollo is associated with a different kind of music,
that of the lute-like kithara. The kithara was employed to accompany
poetry, enhancing its formal shape, giving emphasis to the text whose
meter it supported. Apollonian music was controlled and subordinated
to intellectual purpose. It served as an enhancement of the methodically
constructed rhythms of poetry.
The association of both Dionysus and Apollo with particular kinds of
music recalls the complicated role that music played in ancient Greek
philosophy. On the one hand, music was linked to reason. Music was
viewed by Plato, as by the Pythagoreans, as organized on paradigmatically rational principles. The harmony of music was seen to reflect the
rational organization of all reality, even the movements of the stars. The
principles of harmony were understood as fundamentally mathematical.
And the harmony of music presented a particularly lucid access of the
human mind to rational vision. But it was lucid because of another of
music's roles, that of delighting the senses. Music's beauty drew the
senses to it, and, as a result, the mind could easily grasp the intellectual
forms that musical harmony embodied. Music, in this way, healed the rift
that Plato saw between mind and body.
But Plato was not entirely comfortable with music's ability to appeal
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West
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to bodies and emotions as well as to minds,and in this respectNietzsche's

critiqueis well aimed. The Socratesof Plato'sRepublicurges the censorship of music and the banishment of the aulos. What Nietzsche calls
Apollonianmusic, music whose sole purpose was to exemplifyand enhance perception of form, was the only kind of music that Plato could
unabashedlyextol. As he saw it, the ruleof reason in both the individual
and the state depended on the suppressionof the Dionysiancharacter
of music.
The musicalrealm,then, reflectsthe dualityof Apollo and Dionysus.
Musicis exemplaryin reflectingboth rationallyperceptiblestructureand
the vital involvement of its listenerwith the largerworld. Nietzsche, in
indicatingboth Apollonianand Dionysianmusic, acknowledgesa diversity of aesthetics, which reflects the diverse ways in which reason can
interact with the Dionysian elements in life. Western philosophy and
Westernscience have opted for an Apollonianemphasisin theirconception of reason, to such an extent that the Dionysianfeatures of life are
almost lost from sight. Nietzsche reminds us that this amounts to a
fundamentallyaesthetic decision, a decision about basic principlesof
valuationthat are relevantto the experiencesaffordedby our senses.
If music essentiallyexemplifiesstructuresthat the human mind can
appreciate rationally,then presumablyboth Apollonianand Dionysian
music affordsatisfactionto the rationalmind.The Western characterization of rationalitymakes a value judgment regardingthe sensuous and
affectiveappealsof music.To the extent that the West values rationality
to the exclusion of emotion or sensual satisfaction,it insiststhat music's
value, like that of any other phenomenon in human experience, lies
exclusivelyin its exhibitionof rationallygraspablestructure.
But other valuations of music are clearly possible. In our practical
musical experience, even the most ardent devotee of reason enjoys
music for its sensuous and emotional impact.I submit,therefore,that we
whose education has been premised on the Western conception of
rationalitymightrecognizethe limitationsof our conception of rationality
by reflecting on our more than rational experience of music. I also
contend that we mightgain insightinto the perspectivesof other cultures
on the role of reasonif we considerthe valuationsimplicitin their musics,
in particular,and in their aesthetic phenomena generally.
Musicas Imageof CulturalValues
ManyBritishand Americanethnomusicologists,throughtheirstudies
of music from other parts of the world, have reached the same two
conclusions:(1)the principlesa society uses to orderits music reflectthe
principlesthey employ in orderingother dimensions of their lives and
(2) music reflects cultural values generally. Alan Lomax,for instance,
correlated such societal patterns as degree of hierarchization or egalitari-
633

anism, level of sexual repression, encouragement of individual freedom

of expression, and so on with the characteristics of a society's music.
Specifying musical characteristics in accordance with the "cantometric"
coding method he developed, he characterized the music of each society
that he studied in terms of the following factors:
the size and socialstructureof the music-makinggroup;the locationand role
of leadershipin the music-makinggroup;the type and the degree of integration in the music-makinggroup;the type and the degree of melodic, rhythmic, and vocal embellishmentin a sung performance;and the qualitiesof the
singingvoice normallyeffected by the chosen singersin a culture."
Lomax was convinced by his data that, in every case studied, a strong
convergence obtained between musical forms and other societal patterns. (Egalitarianinteraction among members of musical ensembles, for
instance, reflected egalitarian interaction in the larger society as well,
while hierarchical ensemble structure reflected a hierarchically organized
society.) At the end of one study tracing parallels between musical forms
in Western European folk song and Pygmy-Bushman music-and in the
patterns of interpersonal behavior in the respective societies-Lomax
concludes:
Severalviable concepts seem to be indicatedby the researchat this stage.
First,that, as long as music is considered cross-culturallyas a whole and in
behavioralterms, it is possible to locate structurescomparableto known
culture patterns. Second, that these esthetic structures remain relatively
stablethroughtime and space. Third,that these stable structurescorrespond
to and representpatternsof interpersonalrelationshipwhich arefundamental
in the various forms of social organization.Fourth,that analysis of cantometric structuremay providea precise and illuminatingway of lookingat
the culturalprocess itself. Fifth,that, since the cantometric coding system
deals with expressivematerialwhich all societies providespontaneouslyand
unself-consciously,it may become a tool for characterizingand, in some
sense, measuringgroupemotionalpatterns.... At the level of musicalconversation,we enter a limitlessrealmof nuance,where reinforcementneverbrings
surfeit or fatigue, where the ear delights in playing with a scale of tiny
differences,and the restatement of the familiaris not a command but an
invitationto returnhome.'2
John Blacking suggests that we should expect this mirroringrelationship
to occur in every society's music:
Functionalanalysesof musicalstructurecannot be detached from structural

analysesof its social function:the functionof tones in relationto each other
cannot be explainedadequatelyas partof a closed system without reference
to the structuresof the socioculturalsystem of which the musicalsystem is
a part, and to the biologicalsystem to which all music makersbelong.... If
some music can be analyzedand understoodas tonal expressionsof human
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experiencein the context of differentkindsof social and culturalorganization,

I see no reason why all music should not be analyzed in the same way.13
Blacking's analysis gives us grounds for expecting that both universal
biological factors and specific cultural patterns will be evident in all
music. These two factors hint at a partial explanation of why members of
one culture can learn to appreciate the music of other cultures (given that
all music depends on shared biological rhythms and capacities) but also
why most listeners experience their most profound musical rapture while
listening to music from their own society (whose full range of patterns and
values are obvious to them and connect most completely with their life
experiences thus far). I shall return to this point.
Nonethnomusicologists, too, have increasingly observed the intimate
connection between the patterns of music and the social patterns of
cultural life. LeRoiJones concurs that music can reflect ideas about other
concerns, and argues that this is a more fundamental function of music
than its experimentation with purely "musical" (that is, structural-we
might read "Apollonian") ideas: "... Music can be seen to be the result
of certain attitudes, certain specific ways of thinking about the world, and
only ultimately about the 'ways' in which music can be made."'4
Even when considering only the classical music of Western Europe,
philosopher Roger Scruton lends support to the view that music mirrors
cultural values more generally. He argues that the significance of music
to its indigenous audience depends on their recognition in music of
patterns from everyday experience:
The audience must... be able to hear musicalrelations,musicaldevelopment
and musical style in terms of values and interests that govern its life as a
whole. It must, therefore, be familiarwith such musical experiences as the
following:hearinga rhythmas a dance, as a march,as a summons to arms;
hearing a stretch of counterpoint as a unity of concurrent movements,
moving toward a common stasis; hearing energy, languor, hesitation and
resolution;hearinga chord as a question,an answer,a quiescence; hearinga
melody as a character,a declaration,a common resolve;hearinga passage
as songlike,hymnlike,recitativelike,and so on. What holds that bewildering
class together?The only answerthat I find persuasiveis this: in each of those
experienceswe may discerna peculiaroperationof the imagination(whichI
have referredto by the words "hearingas").And by virtue of that operation, the excitement of music becomes, in an immediate intuitiveway, the
excitement of life itself.'5
Scruton's examples address specifically Western musical experience. Indian classical music, for instance, does not lend itself to being heard as
"a call to arms" or "a march," although a given instance may convey a
heroic rasa to listeners immersed in its vocabulary. What Scruton's point
implies, however, is that the experienced communal life of members of a
given culture is essential to their interpretation of their own music.
635

This perspective, confirmed again and again by ethnomusicological

investigations, is at odds with the view that music is essentially a set of
abstract relationships between tones. This latter view, which concurs with
the attitudes valorized by the Western concept of rationality, is a popular
view of music in the Anglo-American philosophical community.'6 Ironically, this structuralist view of music can itself be seen as evidence for the
alternative, contextualist view. For the values implicit in the Western
understanding of reason are precisely what the Western elite values in its
music: clear structure that can be understood by the intellect without
reference to either sense experience or emotional response. This is another case of a culture's idiosyncratic values being explicitly drawn upon
in the interpretation of music. Moreover, these same values go into the
creation of Western classical music, which emphasizes formal features
that can easily be translated into the static formulation of the score
and which deemphasizes features that require active participation or
interaction with the music makers (rhythm, improvisation, "swing," and
so on).17
If the conclusions of the ethnomusicologists cited are correct, it

would appear that whatever differences might obtain between the conceptions of rationality of various cultures would be reflected in their
music. If this is so, music might be a valuable starting point for crosscultural interchange about the nature of reason and its possible and
actual functions in human experience.
That music does reflect cultural conceptions of rationality is further
suggested by the experience of anthropologist Steven Feld in his interactions with the Kalulitribe of Papua New Guinea. Missionary scuttlebutt
had classified the Kaluli as an exceedingly unmusical people, on the
ground that they could not even sing hymns in unison. Feld's investigation of Kalulimusic led to quite a different conclusion. Feld observed that
the central aesthetic notion involved in Kalulimusic making is, in Kaluli,
dulugu ganalan, which Feld translates as "lift-up-over-sounding." The
Kaluli take particular aesthetic delight in layers of sound overlapping
each other. Feld characterizes "lift-up-over-sounding" as involving
-continuous layers,sequentialbut not linear;
-non-gappedmultiplepresences and densities;
-overlappingchunks without internalbreaks;
-a spiraling,archingmotiontumblingslightlyforward,thinning,and thickening
back again.
PhilosophyEast&West
Feld goes on to observe that "lift-up-over-sounding" characterizes not

only the Kaluliideal for music, but also their ideal of social interaction.
Conversation involves a multiplicity of voices joining in, overlapping each
other. Children are encouraged to contribute their own voices while
other people are talking. The occasion of passing a waterfall is often
celebrated by a Kaluli'sbursting into song-creating, in effect, a social
636

relationship with the waterfall. Societal participation essentially involves

adding one's own sonic contribution to a flowing and ongoing auditory
texture.'8
Would singing in unison make any sense in a society organized in this
fashion? Obviously not. The missionaries thought it reasonable to consider a unison the easiest musical achievement for a choral group. The
Kalulimight even agree with that-to the Kaluli,perhaps, the unison is
too easy to be aesthetically worth doing. What struck one cultural group,
in this case, as the most obvious, straightforward achievement struck the
other as something to be avoided, an error.
To claim that this case illuminates the differences between cultural
conceptions of reason implies that the criteria of "reasonableness" are
essentially the criteria of rationality. Implicitly, that is what I have been
assuming since the beginning of my discussion. Different cultures have
different visions of what "rationality" amounts to. These visions determine what will strike members of a given society as "rational"or "reasonable." And if members of one culture are serious about understanding
another's perspective on this subject, they are best advised to consider
the images.
The West's image of rationality might be noteworthy for its effacement of its own imagistic character. (Whether this is a unique disadvantage for the West in cross-cultural dialogue is unclear. The familiar is
almost always the most difficult to articulate; perhaps the images associated with basic terms in any culture are seen by that culture as too
obvious to be problematized.) Western "rationality"aims to be the palest,
least sensuous, least affective way for human beings to think. As a result,
this "rationality"easily deceives its admirers into believing that they are
unaffected by their context, since context affords sense experience and
the motivation for affective response. Western "rationality,"however, like
that of other cultures, conforms to a culturally produced image. This
image is related to its culture's experience of the world, including its goals,
its geographical setting, and its overall style of doing things. Making sense
of it or any other cultural image of rationality needs to take all of these
matters into account.
An Aesthetic Approach to Cultural Conceptions of Rationality
Taking another culture's context into account as a means of making
sense of its concepts is a tall order. How can we make sense of a context
if its concepts are opaque to us? And if we can't do that, are we caught
in a hopeless bind of untranslatability?
In the strongest sense, we cannot fully apprehend another culture's
context. We cannot exchange the familiarity of our childhood environment for that of another, although complete appreciation of another's
background would require that. Even in a weaker sense, our insight into
another culture's concepts is impaired by the problem that one always
637

learns the meaning of another's terms by translating them into one's own.
This is not an insurmountable problem. Sufficient exposure to the situations in which another culture uses its terms allows one insight into the
differences between its language and one's mother tongue. The reassurance offered by this consideration, however, is mitigated by the fact
that human finitude prevents one's intimate acquaintance with many
other cultures. The upshot seems to be that cross-cultural dialogue can
proceed only very slowly, one long-prepared interaction at a time.
I do not deny that time is required for the project of learning how
another culture thinks. But even more essential for any learning about
another culture is a willingness to empathize. To return to the images of
Apollo and Dionysus, I want to argue that in the arena of cross-cultural
communication, the Dionysian experience of concern and openness
toward another culture must precede the Apollonian (intellectually lucid)
comprehension of its characteristics. "Understanding" is ambiguously
intellectual and affective. I submit that the affective dimension of understanding another culture is more fundamental than the more narrowly
intellectual.
Therefore, I believe that the best way to open the lines of crosscultural communication is for interested parties to seek out what occasions aesthetic response in any foreign culture they encounter. I am
convinced that aesthetic experience generally facilitates intercultural understanding. I privilege music, however, because technology has made it
nearly universally available, and because music so immediately addresses
the entire body, a common denominator we can assume among members of all cultures.
Why should aesthetic experience-particularly the aesthetic experience of music-enhance cross-cultural communication?
(1) Firstof all, music is immediately appealing on a physiological level.
Even before one develops a sensitivity to a culture's musical vocabulary
or an awareness of how it is made, music's direct appeal to the senses
makes at least an element of the culture's experience of the music easily
accessible.
(2)The effort to learn another culture's musical vocabulary is multiply

rewarding, and thus self-reinforcing. Granted, the vocabulary of a particular cultural style may not be immediately accessible. Ifone seriously seeks
a musical admission to cross-cultural understanding, one must, in some
cases, make considerable cognitive and imaginative efforts to learn this
kind of vocabulary.
But one gains through such efforts new possibilities for enjoyment. In
the same way that any new discovery of something enhances one's life
(be it a new spice or a new mathematical theorem), acquaintance with
another culture's music enriches one's experience. Moreover, the enhancement in this case is immediately delightful. Music affords a rich
638

experience that addresses the entirety of the receptive auditor-body,

mind, emotion, and spirituality. The more one prepares the intellect for
what it might find pleasurable in the experience, the more another
tradition's music affords this multidimensional pleasure. In addition, the
effort to imagine beyond the limits of the familiar disposes one to be
broadly receptive-to other individuals and their way of doing things, as
well as to particular works of art.
(3) Coming to enjoy a foreign music encourages empathy and a
recognition of what is common among us. Music, no matter how alien, is
perceived as a human construction. To listen appreciatively to music
involves a kind of empathy with its makers. Whether one taps one's foot
or claps the rhythm, one feels a bond with those who make it. To share
rhythms that reflect those of our bodies, to share the thrill of particular
experiential nuances with others-these are modes of communion with
other human beings that transcend cultural and personal differences.
(4) One also gains some appreciation of what is different in different
cultures. One might do this theoretically, by inquiring into the values
reflected in a foreign music and comparing these to the values that are
manifest in one's own. But even prereflectively, one can gain some
awareness of what is distinctive. When I admire the improvisational feats
of a musician from another culture, I gain in my aesthetic appreciation of
both the individual and the culture involved precisely because these are
achievements that neither I nor my culture could duplicate. My inclination is to treat both the musician and his or her culture with respectand more than respect. I appreciate in a double sense.
(5) The combination of this respectful response with a sense of identification (even immediate connection) makes one's encounter with another culture's music multidimensional. Being aware of both similarity
and difference, one is already in a position to be sensitive to both, and is
probably motivated to refine one's awareness.
(6) One gains such sensitivity to points of similarity and difference in
a noncontentious context. Conceptual articulation of differences is more
likely than not to exacerbate them, particularly because one naturally
translates another society's terms into one's own, thereby preserving
one's tendency to treat one's own terms as prior. In the experience of
another culture's music, by contrast, one is not competing for the status
of the dominant spokesperson, who has the right to determine the
language in which ideas are expressed. Through music one can encounter
something of another culture's view of the world without loss or prejudice against one's own culture's way of doing things.
(7) Perhaps most importantly, music (and aesthetic experience more
generally) affords the possibility of sharing something of another culture's
joy in its experience. By virtue of gaining some awareness of how an
639

artwork is interpreted through the lens of its originating culture's values,

one abandons one's sense of foreignness in favor of participatory delight.
Such sharing puts into perspective the differences between diverse cultural views of rationality. Although perhaps recognizing the idiosyncratic
principles organizing another culture's music, one's overriding recognition is of one's ability to participate in the characteristically human
activity of responding musically to life.
I shall close with FriedrichSchiller'sreminder that aesthetic experience
is an invaluable means of transcending human conflict, even conflict
motivated by conviction about what is rational. Aesthetic experience,
Schiller tells us, is always the basis on which human beings are brought
into dialogue.
Though need may drive Man into society, and Reason implantsocial principles in him, Beautyalone can confer on him a social character.Tastealone
bringsharmonyinto society, because it establishesharmonyin the individual.
All other forms of perception divide a man, because they are exclusively
based eitheron the sensuous or on the intellectualpartof his being;only the
perceptionof the beautifulmakessomethingwhole of him, because both his
naturesmust accord with it. Allotherformsof communicationdividesociety,
because they relate exclusively either to the private sensibilityor to the
private skillfulnessof its individualmembers, that is, to what distinguishes
between one man and another; only the communication of the Beautiful
unites society, because it relatesto what is common to all.'9
NOTES
1 - Catherine A. Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a

Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 157.
2 - See Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," Philosophy and
Public Affairs1, no. 3 (Spring1972): 229-243.
3 - Plato Republic, bk. IIl,401, as cited in Philosophies of Art and Beauty:
Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger, ed. Albert
Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1964), p. 28.
4 - FriedrichNietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (included with The Case of
Wagner), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967),
p. 35.
PhilosophyEast&West
5 - Kenneth Burke, "On Form," in Esthetics Contemporary, ed. Richard

Kostelanetz (Buffalo:Prometheus Books, 1978), p. 133.
640

6 - Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy,p. 94.

7 - Ibid., p. 95.
8 - For a further discussion of the unrationalizable nature of tragic suffering, see Kathleen Marie Higgins, Nietzsche's Zarathustra (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1987), pp. 19-21.
9 - Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pp. 90-91.
10 - Ibid., p. 40.
11 - Alan Lomax, "Song Structure and Social Structure," in Readings in
Ethnomusicology, ed. David P. McAllester (New York:Johnson Reprint
Corporation, 1971), p. 229.
12 -Ibid., pp. 250-251.
13 - John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), pp. 30-31.
14 - LeRoiJones, Blues People (New York:William Morrow, 1963), p. 153.
15 - Roger Scruton, "Musical Understanding and Musical Culture," in
What Is Music? ed. Philip Alperson (New York: Haven, 1988), p. 354.
16 - For an analysis of this perspective, see Kathleen Marie Higgins, The
Music of Our Lives (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991),
pp. 10-46.
17 - For an excellent discussion of such participatory and performancebased features of music, see Charles Keil, "Motion and Feeling
through Music," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24, no. 3
(Spring 1966): 337-350, and "Participatory Discrepancies and the
Power of Music," Cultural Anthropology 2, no. 3 (August 1987):
275-283.
18 - Steven Feld, "Aesthetics as Iconicity of Style (Uptown Title) or
(Downtown Title) 'Lift-Up-Over-Sounding': Getting into the Kaluli
Groove," Yearbook for TraditionalMusic 20 (1988): 74-113. See also
Steven Feld, "Sound Structure as Social Structure," Ethnomusicology
28, no. 3 (September 1984): 383-409, and Sound and Sentiment:
Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).
19 - FriedrichSchiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. Reginald
Snell (New York: Unger, 1954), p. 138.
641


Apollo, Music, and Cross-Cultural Rationality

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