THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY

Author(s): Carlo Migliaccio and Anne Goodrich Heck

Source: Rivista Italiana di Musicologia , 2000, Vol. 35, No. 1/2, Le discipline
musicologiche: prospettive di fine secolo / The musicological disciplines: end-of-century
prospects (2000), pp. 187-210
Published by: Libreria Musicale Italiana (LIM) Editrice on behalf of Società Italiana di
Musicologia
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24323742

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY

My God, what has sound got to do with music!

Charles Ives

Introduction

In contemporary philosophy about music one encounters two différent

methodological approaches. The first is marked by confidence in the capac
ity of philosophical language to define exhaustively the characteristics and
components of musical art, and to put its essence into words. It relies on
the soundness of the theoretical tools that enabled a long philosophical tra
dition to articulate a complete and consistent 'discourse' on music, its rudi
ments, and its aesthetic properties. In part, this attitude cornes from recog
nizing that the philosophical logos is superior to any other type of linguistic
expression and that conceptual knowledge embraces ali the différent kinds
of subject matter. The second approach is found in writers who, even while
staying within purely philosophical boundaries and respecting its spécifie
methodology, look at music neither as a particular branch of aesthetics nor
as an art situated within a coherent thought process, but as a frontier terri
tory for which logicai and linguistic tools are inadequate. While the former
approach enjoys a long-standing tradition in Western philosophical and
aesthetic thought, we can say that the latter belongs specifically to the
twentieth century, even though it is possible to identify obvious precursors
and predecessors. For instance, if we can associate the models of Hegelian
philosophy and positivism with the former approach, we can relate philoso
phers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to the latter. While the former can
be defined as speculative and analytical, the latter belongs to the criticai or
existential type. Far from being in mutuai conflict, these represent two
equally legitimate perspectives of musical philosophy. They have many dif
férences, but also points in common, and they are often in dialogue, linked
to one other. To the former group belong, in general, théories of musical
aesthetics properly speaking and philosophies of music, in the objective
sense of the genitive case (philosophies about music). These are the philo
sophical currents and writers that share a belief in an unequivocal cor
respondence between philosophical description and musical objectivity.

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188 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

Moreover, they are based on methods, proc

for suprahistorical and supracultural universa
let us point out within this group four d
philosophies of the idealists (referring to
musicologists from Alfredo Parente and Sa
la); those with linguistic and structural p
Schloezer, Susanne Langer, Léonard Meyer
the phenomenologists (Waldemar Conrad,
Luigi Rognoni, Giovanni Piana); and finall
strand (Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer).
Whether the second approach belongs to
aesthetics within itself is a difficult question
epistemologica! scope of this discipline has
dispute at the présent time. For now, we will
this sui generis field that we may cali philoso
ophy of music, with the understanding that
stood as subjective (music's philosophy); tha
a philosophy belonging to music, as if this
its own internai philosophical and metaphy
such a perspective may seem mystical and the
as in fact it has brought itself face to fac
cretely, seeking to get to the heart of its tec
The writers in question, in fact, are gener
musicological awareness and refined analyt
the disposai of philosophical knowledge. T
guage and technique, which has reached a
plexity in the twentieth century, has obliged
philosopher of music, to acquire spécifie
other historical situations was superfluous
ulation has turned out to be necessary in o
any discourse on music. This is also due to
tury has overcome a spiritualist suspicion o
issues. The necessity for a live and direct con
linked to the conviction that it is precisely t
flection and theoretical interprétation. It is a

1 More complete and exhaustive information on is

contemporary musical aesthetics can be found in: Enri
tics, London, Macmillan, 1990 (It. ed., L'estetica musi
Einaudi, 1976, and L'estetica musicale dal Settecento a o
gio nell'estetica contemporanea, Torino, Einaudi, 1973
Estetica musicale. La storia e le fonti, Milano, La Nuo
no instabile. Saggi sulla filosofia della musica nel Novec

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY 189

mass of philosophical problems in the process of coming into existence,

and it falls to the philosopher to identify and define its scope. Hence such a
perspective, instead of reducing philosophical discourse to an admission of
impotence, has actually broadened its hermeneutical tools and speculative
hypothèses, with the aim of approaching the phenomenon of music in as
ostensible and suitable a way as possible. To find inspiration and stimula
tion for his spéculations, the philosopher of past eras often turned to litera
ture rather than to the non-verbal arts, but in the twentieth century it is
those arts, and especially music, that have enlarged their rôle and impor
tance when addressing metaphysical knowledge. On the one hand this has
entailed a greater theoretical awareness on the part of performers; on the
other it has demanded of the philosopher greater and more specialized ex
pertise than in the past.
However diverse their ideological approaches and results, the writers of
this group deserve special credit for placing the problem of the musical ob
ject at the center of a more general reflection. Moreover, they have identi
fied music as the source of a philosophical awareness that was otherwise
fated to remain beyond the reach of traditional speculative tools. Of
course, they also share the limitations and historicity of this approach, since
it is not their intent to attain absolute methodological objectivity or meta
physical universality. Nonetheless, their contribution, when integrated and
contextualized within a larger array of theoretical issues, provokes much in
terest and stimulâtes further research. The goal of this essay is to identify
the theoretical grounds and the spécifie historical circumstances of these
philosophies of music. Finally, we will try to point out the connections to
certain aspects of thought that are more specifically aesthetic and musico
logical, aspects that are necessary in order to identify a common ground for
research and to define the scope of a discipline and an object whose limits
are hard to describe.

A THEORY OF TEMPORALITY AND A REFLECTION ON MUSIC PHILOSOPHY

Twentieth-century philosophical thought is generally characterized by a

constant questioning of its own rootedness in a reality that is being contin
ually transformed. The great number of technological innovations, social
changes, and historical upheavals that characterized this era brought with
them a fresh point of view, from which philosophical awareness examined
itself and its own historicity. Traditional research into the grounds of being
and knowing turned its attention to a set of problems that called into ques
tion the absoluteness claimed for every static and absolute ideal form,
favoring instead criticai openness and a greater flexibility of theoretical
approach. Relativism, criticai philosophy, skepticism, and a general anti

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190 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

dogmatism, ali prévalent in twentieth-centur

so much to establish a particular philosop
awareness of our historicity and the weaknes
philosophizing and theorizing.
Understanding philosophical awareness in
to a single discipline, one can say that liter
ing aside their particularities, have in equal
in these terms the issue of the ground of
before, as in the twentieth century, did artis
philosophers feel so involved and engaged in t
own historical and existential rôle, on the
activity. Parallel to this, amid the various cul
tury, one can also include research into the
is new in the history of thought, but it is un
period in question inspirations emerging f
phy, and poetic and aesthetic reflection cam
wholly originai ways. The problem was pos
cal abstraction, but in connection with th
rigid vision of the world. Common to ali thes
in fact, is the awareness of the fleeting and u
its paradoxical quality as a concept that ca
the need for a différent key to gain access an
In this context music has assumed a fund
it is not just one aesthetic expression amo
ground for elucidating a more general refl
concept of time by its very nature cannot be
found a free zone within this specifically t
its own problematical character. Though p
with the nature of time, has shown itself
connotations coherently, music, on the con
of expressing their significance while at the
paradoxality. Thus music's intrinsic affinity
theorizing function, as well as the capacity
terpreting reality, like a litmus paper of the
of the century. We may therefore consider
discipline that has been able to see in the a
sume the task of speculative reflection, an
ments of the real that, in so complex a sit
logicai définition.
If, as we have said, reflection on time is
proach, it is to Henri Bergson that we owe th
of a philosophy of temporality. The impor
siste not only in having drawn a contrast b

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20ra CENTURY 191

ized time - a contrast that now seems pretty obvious - but above ali in hav
ing rethought and found new terms for our perception of duration. His
1911 Oxford lectures, entitled The perception of change, offer us a synthesis
of this set of problems and, more importandy, provide an opening into the
world of aesthetics, which was always implicit in Bergson but never ad
dressed direcdy.2
It is well-known that Bergson reproached positive science and tradi
tional metaphysics for the quandary of reducing reaHty to a concept and
preconceived ideas, forgetting its spécifie character of concrete duration
and temporality. To grasp the real, according to the French philosopher,
one must overcome many theoretical préjudices, because reasoning, com
pared to perception, is always partial. Because of the inadequacy of our
senses, ali of philosophy, ever since the Eleatic school, has made a «substi
tution of the conceived for the perceived», taking recourse in the spirit's
faculties of abstraction and conceptual élaboration. This entailed, however,
distancing ourselves from the concreteness of the real, available through
our senses, thereby falling into the error of allowing method to prevali over
purpose. How, then, can we immerse ourselves in the real? This has be
come the fondamental question posed by this philosopher. What alterna
tive method should we adopt for grasping existence without running the
risk either of duplicating the real in concepts, or on the other hand perceiv
ing the real as fiat and répétitive, like something purely and coldly natural
isée? Bergson was aware of the difficulty in such a perspective, which finds
science and common sense to be its major obstacles. It would be necessary
to revitalize our faculty of perception, to turn to «the direct perception of
change and mobility» in order to «grasp anew change and duration in their
originai mobility». It seems, however, that to do this philosophy must take
artistic expression as a model; indeed, in art reality no longer appears static
to us, but shows us its nuances, its most hidden qualities, its dynamism. For
Bergson, artistic experience has the double privilège both of being situated
in the heart of sensed reality, and also of making us see its further, unex
pected aspects, which we might otherwise miss. Art shows us what philoso
phy is not capable of doing, namely, of extending experience beyond expe
rience itself, and perception beyond perception. The artist has no immedi
ate interest in life, has detached himself from the ordinary run of things,
and does not intend to use his perception for utilitarian purposes; and for
this very reason he succeeds in perceiving directly.
For Bergson, the difficulties metaphysics experiences in grasping dura

2 Henri Bergson, La perception du changement: conférences faites à l'Université de Ox

ford les 26 et 27 mai, 1911, London, Clarendon Press, 1911, now in La pensée et le mouvant,
Paris, PUF, 1934.

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192 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

tion are also due to the prédominance of

fact, more than any other sense, represents f
dent of its spatial divisions. Melody is not
visible motion that only hearing can grasp; ev
as an object of sight, is abstract and arbitrary
stacle to intuition, hearing can be, instead,
ate access to the real. Music, therefore, as
lows us to overcome the difficulties inhere
pression of what is intuited. It permits us
with greater immediacy than either consci
logical misunderstandings) or objective rea
doubt of a substantialist or spatializing nat
ting that is at one and the same time subjecti
and ontological, internai and external. Bergso
important for musicology, not so much be
inately to music in general - as though this
Bergson's philosophy - but rather because
problem of musical temporality, a crucial
proach to music, as well as for the metaph
within a philosophical context of renewal o

Ernst Bloch

Bergson's approach has had considérable effect in stimulating, direcdy

or indirecdy, an aesthetic and musical-philosophical perspective attentive to
the specifically temporal quality of music. One philosopher, Ernst Bloch
(1885-1970), has put his interest in music at the center of his philosophy,
with the aim of proposing a renewed theory of temporality. In 1918 he
wrote The spirit of utopia, an extensive work on purely philosophical
thèmes, but with a third of its pages devoted to music.
Like Bergson, Bloch stresses the importance of subjectivity as a phe
nomenological horizon in which expériences other than scientific ones also
have meaning and dignity. Nonetheless, the German philosopher criticizes
the Frenchman for leading consciousness to a flattening of its criticai func
tions and making it fit the existent; whereas instead, it ought to re-acquire
an active rôle of praxis, one of choosing, orienting, and making dialectical
contrasts in the face of reality. Awareness that the current situation - for
Bloch, Germany and Europe on the eve of the First World War - is
marked by inescapable darkness is linked to a concept of time that consid
ère the lived moment, the nunc, as essentially ungraspable, and thus onto
logically obscure. The concrete succession of moments and the continuity

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20ra CENTURY 193

of what is lived through, properties of Bergson's durée, together with

chronological and scientific temporality, are nothing but superstructure,
historically determined, to conceal the paradoxical and disquieting aspect
of time. The only possible means for consciousness to break through this
surface is to grasp the quality of incompleteness and openness inherent di
alectically in the very obscurity of the moment.
But to do this, the tools provided by contemporary philosophies are in
adequate, according to Bloch, inasmuch as they hinge on scientific objec
tivism and a linguistic-conceptual type of gnoseology. As an alternative,
Bloch believes that artistic, and especially musical, expériences allow a dif
férent approach to the real, inasmuch as they contain in themselves, in their
very language and structure, those dynamics of émotion and imagination
that could constitute a theory of consciousness that is no longer logical
rational but rather «motor-fantastic». Indeed they allow one to go beyond
the limits of gnoseological knowledge and thus to activate the most authen
tically sensitive resources of subjectivity, which correlate to the material de
mands of objectivity. How music can fulfill this function emerges both in
the musicological passages properly speaking and in the places where Bloch
delineates a true philosophy of the history of music.
Above ali else, music is the art that most removes itself from external
reality, sticking most closely to the temporality of what is subjectively lived.
After ali, sound is only «a delicate and transparent body», and music-making
is in itself a pure «tracing of lines on the invisible». The fondamental
abstractness, and at the same time the profound humanity, of music can be
found in the history of Western music from the birth of polyphony up until
Schônberg. During the six hundred or so years of history considered by
Bloch, music developed relatively independently of the other arts and of
the sociologica! context. Not that historical conditions were indiffèrent to
music - in this sense Bloch remains paitly faithful to the Marxist and mate
rialist linéaments of his philosophy, which sees every cultural expression as
an epiphenomenon of elements arising from the economie and social struc
ture. But in that regard, music always represented a surplus, a fracture, and
was often put in the position of being historically out of sync, anticipating,
if anything, material contents rather than simply reflecting them.
This quality is what Bloch calls the «youthfulness» of music, which co
ïncides with his particular historical dialectic; indeed, it can be found in the
évolution of the forms (dance; closed song forms, as for example, fugue;
open song forms; or even the great choral opera such as Beethoven's Fide
lio), or in the contrapuntai working-out of the various voices (durchbrochene
Arheit), with the aim of instilling human and spiritual content into fiat and
abstract forms. The culmination of this process is the dramatization of
counterpoint, which is realized in the sonata form of Beethoven. It is here,
according to Bloch, that the utopian force of music emerges; indeed, in

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 194 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

Beethoven the basic material - the melodi

more and more of its solidity in compari
Haydn's plasticity, turning to the pure te
thematic élaboration and development. Sym
with a static, concise, melodically tenuous t
ontological insubstantiality of the présen
mediately lived. But at the same time the e
like a promise of the future realization of som
theme has the function of a pre-apparition
pating consciousness» grasps the not-yet, or t
of the moment. Indeed, it is in the develo
sions and contrasts that make the theme li
transform it, distort it in such a way as to s
gles, sometimes 'estranged', at other time
then recomposed, until it reappears in the re
dened with the weight of time and the to
through.
Hence every part of the sonata works in conjunction with the preced
ing and following ones, and each one is re-echoed and refracted in what
cornes immediately after, according to a formai law intrinsic to the material
and the compositional strategy. This is what Bloch calls the «counterpoint
of succession», meaning by this the formai function of rhythm and the
«rhythmical culture of the tonic», that is, a higher formalism that connects
and contrasts not the individuai notes or the individuai chords, but groups
of sounds organized according to an expressive logie «no longer traceable
according to convention». This is most obvious in Beethoven, but it is also
what constitutes the soul of any authentically utopian music, such as the
mystical symphonism of Bruckner, Wagner's «infinite melody», and the
chaotic sound constructions of Mahler. Finally, Schònberg's exploration of
the atonai universe represents for Bloch an opening towards the unheard.
In The héritage of our times (1935) and The principle of hope (1959) even
apparently traditional music genres - such as the neoclassicism of Stravin
sky or those giving a nod to the music hall or jazz, such as the works of
Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler - contain a disruptive, transgressive charge.
They succeed in revealing the «phenomenology of the images of desire»
and of «dreams of a better life», which constitutes the key to the Blochian
interprétation of ali twentieth-century culture.

Adorno

The musical-philosophical reflections of Theodor Wiesengrund Ador

no (1903-1969), even though they lead to positions that are antithetical to

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20TH CENTURY 195

Bloch's in many ways, nevertheless follow in his wake. In his thought, the
role of music is fondamental, both for its philosophical implications and for
its sociological and psychological ones. His special aptitude for gathering
philosophical meanings from language and the most hidden recesses of mu
sical technique dérivés both from his in-depth studies of music, notably
under the guidance of Alban Berg, and from the intense criticai analysis of
contemporary cultural expressions that he conducted in the early 1930s at
the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. But it also comes from his
knowledge of the work of Ernst Bloch, to whom he recognized a debt of
gratitude.
The role of expressing the most profound utopian moments of subjec
tivity, which Bloch assigned to music, is présent, but problematical, in
Adorno. In fact, the dialectic within musical material, which Bloch charac
terized in terms of fracture and discontinuity, becomes, in Adorno, con
crete and continuous. Indeed, following in part the linéaments of Hegelian
logie, the moments that constitute dialectical opposition are stili in force
for him in a compelling, and in some sense, binding way. But in contrast to
Hegelian dialectic, that of Adorno is negative; thus the moment of antithe
sis is not eliminated by virtue of a superior speculative synthesis, but re
mains in its own state of unresolved opposition and, in the case of disso
nance, unfulfilled expectation. On the one hand, this means that Adorno
views with a certain nostalgia the age of tonality, the period in which even
the most dramatic dialectical contrasts flowed together in a peaceful resolu
tion, that is, in a finale (the tonai cadenza) in which ali the tensions were
reconciled. On the other hand, for him the only opportunity to escape from
cultural conditioning resides in a total withdrawal into atonality. Funda
mentally, ever since Mahler - who, according to the German philosopher
used traditional materiale in order to «disturb their balance» and hence to
reveal the historical void beneath them - any return to tonality is suspected
of reflecting an ideology and of adapting itself to the existent. This led
Adorno to denounce implacably the music of Stravinsky and ali the neo
classicists of the first post-war years. That of Schònberg, to the contrary,
represents the position of a man who stubbornly resists any compromise
with the dominant culture and bourgeois taste, at the price of an existential
isolation with neither oudets nor prospects. His condemnation of aliénation
and the dehumanization of contemporary society is indeed reflected in the
émancipation of dissonance and the breaking of hierarchical relationships
within acoustical space. Renouncing the unity of the work and an externally
imposed coherence, Schònberg affirms the rights of language and tech
nique in their immanence. In this way he escapes the laws of production
and commodification. At the same time he highlights the problem of turn
ing production and artistry into an object. For art to assume within itself
the social contradictions and the existential anguish of contemporary man

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196 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

entails the demand for an aesthetic purity th

by the consumerism of the industry of culture
But the crucial aspect of Adorno's interpré
is its relationship to the great Western mu
Stravinsky this happens only at the level of
nese musician it occurs at a more profound d
trieval of classicism is, in fact, for Adorno a w
of mechanical subjectivity, since it establishe
lationship with the past. Schònberg, on the
guarding a kind of secret affinity, a subterran
Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn. It is not so m
affinity as of a similar tendency toward the
guage, or that common concept of musical
work something unique and organic. This is
ism in music», meaning by this a concrete an
established by the relationship between sta
and development, and by the tensions inhe
contrast to the static nature of impressionis
neoclassicism.3 This concept of time is supe
negative dialectic and reconciling dialectic, b
sion of the material elements independently of
are connected to structure and language. Ev
tivism, according to Adorno, Schònberg doe
tial dynamic procedure», that is, the «intrin
the idea of a development within the materia
Such a concept of time thus coïncides with th
junction that links the reality of music to h
reality. Indeed, for Adorno, in fidelity to Be
seen as implicitly «untouched by the decade
abandons itself, «in the unconscious depths o
destiny as the conscience of the time», thus
«violence of the historical world».4 Hence, b
musical logie that cannot be expressed verbal
bonds that makes music not just a mere ide
rather the most authentic and concrete expr
tensions.

3 On this subject see Carlo Migliaccio, «Beethoven

'bergsonismo in musica'», Rivista italiana di musicologia
4 T. W. Adorno, Philosophy of modem music, Londo
Filosofia della musica moderna, Torino, Einaudi, 1975, p

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY 197

Vladimir Jankélévitch

An extension of the Bergsonian perspective to the philosophy of music

is to be found, in a very original manner, in Vladimir Jankélévitch (1903
1985), who was indirecdy a student of Bergson. This is certainly no slavish
apphcation of the master's philosophy to music, yet there are almost con
stant references to his theory of time in Jankélévitch's writings, both philo
sophical and musicological.
Jankélévitch's thought, like that of Bloch and Adorno, is tightly bound
to the historical situation in which he was immersed and whose influence
he fully experienced - the Shoah, above ail, which Jankélévitch did not un
dergo in person but which aroused in him a deep sense of suffering and
solidarity with an oppressed people. For Jankélévitch, no expression of
thought, especially philosophy and music, can remain immune from these
conditions, can exempt itself, that is, from the responsibility of commit
ment and denunciation, even if it is indirect and little noticed. This ex
plains why his aesthetic and philosophical choices are sélective, since they
deliberately and drastically exclude, if not totally and flagrandy ignore, the
culture of German-speaking areas. The composers he cites belong, rather,
to the Mediterranean and Slavic régions, especially Russians and French
men, almost as if a feeling of belonging with them (Jankélévitch was from a
Jewish Russian family naturalized in France) expressed itself in the asser
tion of a moral dignity that is otherwise unmentioned or marginalized.
For Jankélévitch, therefore, ethical concern seems to inform both
thought and artistic expression, despite the fact that he lays claim to an ab
solute autonomy for art in the face of any exterior content. It is precisely
because of this autonomy, however, that its deep philosophical meanings
can emerge. In this sense, a fondamental rôle is developed out of the essen
tially temporal character of this art. Indeed, for Jankélévitch the essence of
music is worked out in its passage from an initial silence to a final one, that
is, in the unique and unrepeatable act of its performance. Within this spé
cifie time period, music articulâtes its own formai elements according to in
ternai tensions that determine its meaning and structure; in this way it
créâtes a fictitious world, a jardin clos, whose meanings are self-referential.
The musical material, far from being reduced to a simple transposition into
sound of verbal language, is animated by a sériés of relationships and dy
namics that catalyze it, mainly in the direction of its own annihilation, its
death, which is confirmed in the final instant. Hence the elements of which
it is composed - chords, mélodies, forms - are not at ail static and inert,
nor ascribable to conventional formulae and technical expédients. On the
contrary, they acquire fluidity and vitality, thanks precisely to that very
time-boundedness, which places in jeopardy their solidity and absoluteness

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 198 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

and at the same time gives worth to their

character.
In this sense, music is a living metaphor fo
ably stretched between birth and death, fi
an inaliénable moral value in just this ephe
born affirmation of the temporal autonom
Jankélévitch a sort of ethical bulwark in the
annihilation from without, whether due
philosophical rationalism, which are viewed
of the same absurdity, a characteristic pec
cisely because of its affinity to existential te
represented primarily by music, can claim
tain metaphysical subjects otherwise fated
conceptual language and scientistic spatiali
vitch's view, music is concerned with wha
press or articulate, which it so say that it r
ineffable.
This theme, which has a long philosophical, religious, and mystical tra
dition, finds in Jankélévitch its proper meaning in relation to the theme of
temporality. 'Ineffability' for him is not simply the idea of an outer limit,
placed ontologically beyond any possibility of conceptualization, like Kant's
unendbare Gedankenfiille or Spencer's inexpressible. Its link to temporality
already gives it a horizontal rather than vertical, an existential rather than
ontological connotation. In other words, it is immanent to the time of real
life and integrated into the everyday elapsing of moments; it fits in the in
terstices between language and space, from which it emerges in an impro
vised and unpredictable way, like a spark or a bolt of lightning. This is
what Jankélévitch calls disappearing appearance, of which music represents
the most appropriate example. Sound itself, but also a performance, a
recital, or an improvisation, are events that paradoxically find their mean
ing in not having any meaning, because they appear only to disappear; they
happen in time and in time they find their particular meaning. Language
and science, which need stable objects and seek predictability and symme
try, are shown to be powerless and not up to the task of grasping this fleet
ing and transitory reality.
Hence, in the music of Fauré one would be hard put to make vertical
cuts to separate out recognizable harmonie progressions or standardized
formulae, since it is characterized by a flowing continuity of harmonies.
Thus it is music that best represents the charme of time, that is, a beauty
that cannot be identified with its external form, or with hedonistic gour
mandizing on chords, but rather with a being that is always beyond, an in
expressible alibi (elsewhere), belonging more to the dimension of time than
of space. Thus with the French composer, the essence can be found neither

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20TH CENTURY 199

in the melody nor in the accompaniment, but in their fluid togetherness

and in the changeability of their mutuai relations.5
In Debussy, on the other hand, musical temporality is frozen in mo
ments of stupor and metaphysical ecstasy. These are the moments in expec
tation that, like the acoustical high point or the emotional climaxes, congeal
the preceding tensions and anticipate the upcoming resolutions.6 These are
moments that cannot be reduced to their structural functionality, expressed
in a language and concretized in a form; rather their value and their impact
are focused on the pure and simple actuality of the event. Indeed, their
meaning cannot be exhausted by a purely analytical description; in Debussy
both a sequence of perfect chords and an unresolved dissonance, for in
stance, express a situation of «stagnation», not so much because their har
monie function is suspended, but because the temporal context in which
they find themselves has neutralized every linguistic bond and has brought
forth the absolute reality of the sound alone, including the physical-acousti
cal sense. The fact that they are events in time, unique and unrepeatable,
provides a particular charme to the musical componente, one that is proper
to créatures nearing their end, fragile and exposed to imminent extinction.
For this reason, it is an allure différent from that of Fauré, since it is based
more on hypnotic and lethal immobility than on fresh and fluid movement;
its model is more that of stagnant water than the flow of Heraclites' river.
This is also the meaning of the mystery of Debussy's music, linked to the
figures of fate, anguish, voluptuousness, death, and midday, concretized
musically in a temporal stasis, in répétition and incantatory circularity, in
ironical interruption, and in naturalistic objectivity. Mystery, for Jankélé
vitch, is what characterizes life in its paradoxical relationship with death,
and hence with something impending, anguishing, and inexplicable, but at
the same time exceedingly clear, inescapable, and close to man.
Fauré and Debussy in a sense represent the opposite extremes - in the
sense that the first has a vitalist and Bergsonian optimism and the second
an existential pessimism - of a general philosophy of music based on tem
porality and the ineffable. To this category, however, belong also various
other composers: Ravel, Satie, Rimsky-Korsakov, Chopin, Liszt, Albéniz,
up to the less well-known Déodat de Séverac, Joaquin Nin, and Federico
Mompou. Each of these, in his stylistic and characteristic specificity, is rep
résentative of an aspect of Jankélévitch's philosophy: irony, pretense, artifi
ciality, theatricality, but also intimacy, chasteness, and innocence, in a musi
cal-philosophical context that is sélective, to be sure, paradoxical, and

5 Vladimir Jankélévitch, Fauré et l'inexprimable, Paris, Pion, 1974.

6 Id., Debussy et le mystère, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1949 (Debussy e il mistero, Ital.
trans, by C. Migliaccio, ed. by E. Lisciani-Petrini, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991).

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200 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

problematical, but endowed with strong con

delity to its models, and especially an intens

The philosophy of music in Italy

In the first part of the century, the idealistic thought then dominant in
Italy had the great merit of including the country in the European philo
sophical debate. And later, the oppositions it provoked constituted a ter
rain of criticai discussion of notable cultural value. In addition, idealistic
aesthetics made an important contribution to turning art into an au
tonomous field of philosophical research. As regards music, the scholar
who best succeeded in faithfully and consistendy applying the aesthetics of
Croce to this art was Alfredo Parente (1905-1985). Starting from the thesis
of the fondamental unity of the arts, the author of Music and the arts7
identified music as the privileged instrument for grasping the absolute uni
ty of feeling and expression, form and content, which is the objective of
idealist aesthetics. In this, he is in agreement with Fausto Torrefranca
(1883-1955), who, in The musical life of the spirti? upheld the «spiritual
precedence» of music over the other arts; this is due to what Torrefranca
calls - in romantic and mysticizing tones - the «germinai and abstractive
globality» of music.
On the one hand, the tendency to seek the absolute in art, together
with the belief that pure artistic expression is almost totally independent of
technical and material conditions, allowed music to assert its proper status
as an autonomous creative expression, whether in individuai genres or in its
historical and sociological concretizations. On the other hand, it widened
the gap between the Framework of idealism and actual developments in
contemporary artistic practice. Indeed, a survey of Italy in the second half
of the twentieth century reveals a clear libération from this framework and
a reorientation of research towards phenomenological positions.
In any case, the need for a différent criticai approach and for a more
flexible aesthetics, in the face of a musical reality in constant transforma
tion, led a number of musicologists to révisé idealism, while stili remaining
faithful to its theoretical assumptions. Massimo Mila (1910-1988) in partic
ular, while theorizing about the unconscious nature of artistic expression,9
granted that evidently dull, purely technical examples of twentieth-century

7 Alfredo Parente, La musica e le arti, Bari, Laterza, 1936.

8 Fausto Torrefranca, La vita musicale dello spinto, Torino, Bocca, 1910.
9 Massimo Mila, L'esperienza musicale e l'estetica, Torino, Einaudi, 1956.

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY 201

musical practice could stili acquire some aesthetic dignity when analyzed
for their deeper intentions and motivations. It is remarkable, then, how
close Mila cornes to the more open and problematic positions of aesthetics
and musicology, as well as to the phenomenological and materialistic ex
pectations that are generally considered the exact opposite of idealist abso
lutism.
The phenomenological school, however, starting in the 1930s, followed
an independent theoretical course, using as their point of departure the cri
tique of Crocean idealism made by Antonio Banfi (1886-1957). According
to this founder of the Milanese philosophical school, the problems inherent
in identifying art with aesthetics, and feeling with expression, prevented the
aesthetics of Croce - and therefore that of Parente - from adequately un
derstanding the phenomenon of art in general, and of music in particular.
To do so, according to Banfi, would require a greater capacity for intuition
and a «concrete sensitivity to the problems of art» - for example, the prob
lem of interprétation, of technique, of structure - which an abstract meta
physics, based on what Banfi calls «conceptual realism», ends up conceal
ing behind a sériés of ideological préjudices.10 Banfi's student, Enzo Paci
(1911-1976), explored in greater depth the problem of music and provided
a theoretical outline of the problem of how to apply Husserl's thought to
the field of music, by understanding phenomenology in a sense that is open
to French existentialism, Marxism, and to a significant rereading of Kant's
transcendental schematism.11 Indeed, just as for Husserl perceptive expéri
ence cannot be reduced to atomized elements, so also for Paci musical ex
périence cannot be isolated from the complex reality in which it finds itself,
nor can it be reduced to technical data or linguistic factors as ends in them
selves. Going back to Kant, whose Critique of pure reason had shown how
the schema of time could harmonize the opposites of the categorical and
the perceptible, Paci proposes a «temporal phenomenology», aimed at
overcoming the antithesis between the spiritual and the corporeal, the eter
nai and the transitory, the structural and the mental. Similarly, the funda
mentally temporal structure of music allows this art to go beyond the oppo
sition between space and time rigidly understood as abstract ideas, between
feelings and représentations expressed linguistically and technically, and
also between system and liberty, tonality and atonality. Musical time, says

10 Antonio Banfi, «A proposito di un'estetica musicale (1936)», in Vita dell'arte. Scritti

di estetica e filosofia dell'arte, ed. by E. Mattioli and G. Scaramuzza, Reggio Emilia, Istituto A.
Banfi, 1988, pp. 439-444; Id., «Esecuzione musicale (1939-1940)», in I problemi di un'estetica
filosofica, ed. by Luciano Anceschi, Milano-Firenze, Parenti, 1961, pp. 341-343.
11 Enzo Paci, «Sulla musica contemporanea» (1958) and «Per una fenomenologia della
musica» (1965), in Relazioni e significati. 3. Critica e dialettica, Milano, Lampugnani Nigri,
1966, pp. 80-93 and 94-107.

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202 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

Paci, referring to Husseri's Phenomenology of

made up of relations, retentions, expectation
antee the fundamental structural unity of the
versible, in Bergsonian fashion, but that does n
a structure based on time, whose coherence
their distinctiveness over against a constructio
Thus music, inasmuch as it is a temporally
not be rigidified in static and dogmatic ideas
toward ever new realizations, ever in the p
even the idolatry of the new - as the dodeca
stood, according to Paci with reference to
metaphysical hypostasis). In musical experien
innovative, such as The rite of spring and
stresses their dialectical character of fractur
ing out towards the future. In this sense music
concretely in the historical context, and on
tioning expression of an intentionality that
and existential meaning. Thanks to its dynam
fore, music necessarily is related to that dim
gories, the «world of life» of which Husserl
ropean sciences.
Thus the Milanese school is distinguished
field of music, whether understood as one of
crisis of modem man emerges or as the arti
for renewal; for this reason, it has often addre
ments in composition, seeking to understand th
cial and cultural connections.12
In a more purely musicological field, Luig
phasized the ethical, as well as the theoretica
cal movements. On one hand, expressionism
interpreted by him as «putting the world in
tuting phenomenologically an acoustical un
earlier suggested.13 New musical experiences
in part Adorno's approach, become for him
ticity that is lost in modem civilization, pro
technique as an end in itself nor in the idol
Viennese schools, therefore, and in electron
lem that attacks the essence of humanity in its
problem of a spécifie language, let alone an art

12 In this sense, see aut-aut, nos. 7 (1952), 46 (1958)

13 René Leibowitz, Introduction à la musique de douz

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20τή CENTURY 203

it is only «by going back to the origins of the worid of sounds, to the pure
perception of the acoustical fact», that is, by adopting the process of
Husserl's eidetic réduction, that man can recover his lost rapport with him
self and with nature.14
Musical-philosophical research of a phenomenological stamp has found
a sequel and an unusual deepening in the thought of one of Paci's students,
Giovanni Piana (1932), who has moved from the «temporal phenomenolo
gy» of his teacher towards a phenomenological structuralism, enriched by
both the neopositivist epistemology of Wittgenstein and the neo-Kantian
transcendentalism of Cassirer.15 The necessity of avoiding any mental reflec
tion when dealing with the possible création of a perceptive experience led
Piana to seek out the basic rules, the originai eidetic nuclei, which, as a pre
liminary to language and every cultural médiation, preside over the forma
tion of the meaning and significance of an object or a work. In the case of
music, pure sound, noise, acoustical space, as well as the multiple dimen
sions of the imagination, assert themselves, even at the non-specialist level,
in their phenomenological obviousness. Following this methodology, Piana
has not only set himself the goal of providing a solid epistemological frame
work for a theory of music, but has also prevented aesthetic considérations
about this art from being reduced to a sterile empirical relativism, inade
quate to a correct understanding of the complex reality of music.

The contribution of musicology to the philosophy of music

The philosopher-musicologists we have been considering are the most

significant examples of the theoretical, ethical, and metaphysical attention
being paid to music, which, as we have seen, is characteristic of the century
just past. But the topics raised by these philosophers have also been ad
dressed by many composers and musicologists, who have demonstrated a
similar intent of making music a source of philosophical inspiration. This is
not only because of a growing realization on the part of modernity that mu
sic is important for expressing the most profound features of an epoch and
a civilization - which expectation, as we have seen, dérivés from pure
philosophical reflection. From a purely musical and musicological point of
view, it is also, and especially, due to the need to supplément music with
thought, reflection, and theoretical justification in a way that was never en
countered in other eras, yet without impairing the technical and linguistic

Luigi Rognoni, Fenomenologia della musica radicale, Milano, Garzanti, 1974, p. 34.
Giovanni Piana, Filosofia della musica, Milano, Guerini e associati, 1992.

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204 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

autonomy of musical art. Any composer no

augment his own works and scores with a s
mentary or extemporaneous, in which phil
over any other interpretive system.
The theme of temporality, which we hav
eth-century music philosophy and which i
music in its cultural and structural context,
d'union between philosophical thought and th
composers. Of course the musical time to wh
of reformulation and methodological clari
can provide; indeed, to speak of time in m
flect on rhythm, the organization of meas
but to address the realm of the possible co
cifie characteristics, and its relation to rea
obvious, in fact, that every musician must of
time during his composing practice; but refle
cal time requires phenomenological tools th
a hard time acquiring.
The two composers leaving the greatest ma
porary music, Arnold Schonberg and Igor S
manship is necessary and yet did not shir
which has become an essential component
From The theory of harmony to The structu
berg accomplished a task that only seemed
solely to a justification of atonality. Abov
language under the magnifying glass of th
trate the recesses of tonai harmony and stru
tect there an intrinsic logie capable of groun
and the formai and temporal structure of mu
tional theoretical rules. He put into pract
duction of music, with the aim of bringing o
originai ideas that are otherwise eclipsed
and cultural nature. Seen from this perspe
freed from its linguistic contextualization, r
Schonberg, and, in the words of Husserl, p
bone» person as a «primary offering visio
over, to a totality and a structure différent
recognizable; we are dealing with a 'région'
cal, in which dissociated elements come toget
mai level and, as he himself expresses it, «
ny» that remains implicit on the musical h
potentiality. It is on this difficult gamble

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY 205

positional practice, which for this very reason contains intrinsically an im

portant philosophical and theoretical valency.
The basic concern of Igor Stravinsky's Poetics of music is to justify
compositional procédures in the light of a precise concept of time. Besides
presenting his conception of music, this work is a study of temporality and
the meaning of musical création. This is especially true if one compares
Stravinsky's text to the article by Russian philosopher Petr Suvchinsky, La
notion du temps et la musique,16 as well as to the writings of French musi
cologist Gisèle Brelet, Le temps musical, and L'interprétation créatrice. The
latter two works offer a theory of ontological time, as opposed to psycho
logical time, especially that of the expressive type derived from the Roman
des and Expressionists. The former work aims instead at organizing musi
cal material according to objective and suprapersonal temporal principles.
That is, it is concerned with that 'dynamic calm' that coïncides with a feel
ing of satisfaction, equilibrium, and internai order on the part of both the
composer and the listener. Musical experience is viewed by Suvchinsky as
«one of the purest forms of the ontological sensation of time»; this occurs
whenever music is characterized by the absence of emotive and psychologi
cal elements, attaining a fiat and agogically strict temporality based on con
trol of the émotions and the suspension of any extramusical reference. Us
ing a misleading term, Suvchinsky speaks in this regard of «chronometric
music», which might make one think of chronological time or a metronom
ic beat that marks a regular rhythm. In reality, by ontological time and
chronometric music he means the congruency between musical material
and the passage of time, or between audible acoustical elements and the
durée that «leads music and détermines its temporal form». Thus the Rus
sian philosopher, promptly followed by Stravinsky's Harvard lectures, al
ludes to a real and 'normal' time that is something quite différent from ob
jective and chronological time. It is rather a higher temporality based on a
good fit between acoustical material and creative activity, which, among
other things, is also a prerequisite for any subjective experience of time.
One can therefore draw a comparison between the unique Time about
which Bergson theorized in Duration and simultaneity and a time perceived
subjectively, but which conforms to the suprapersonal universality of the
passing of events, independent of subjective viewpoints and abstract scien
tific hypothèses.
In an essay on Stravinsky the French composer, Yves Baudrier (1906
1988), also captured the meaning of Stravinskian temporality with much

16 Pierre Suvcinskij, «La notion du Temps et la Musique (Réflexions sur la typhologie

de la création musicale)», La Revue musicale, XX, no. 191, mai-juin 1939 (Numéro special
consacré à Igor Strawinsky), pp. 71-80.

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 206 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

insight. He is one of the founders of the gr

Daniel Lesur, Olivier Messaien, and André J
for music to free itself from the bonds of acad
vor of its own 'humanity' and comprehensi
however, this necessity should not be transla
traditional linguistic and styhstic forms, bu
psychological dimension of listening, which
processes and temporal structures that the m
again and respect. According to Baudrier, it wa
introducing the element of shock into appar
tures, broke the classical compositional equil
stood as the organization of musical discour
(that is, the style and musical functions recogn
Thus the Russian composer succeeded in sepa
the external form, instead tracing the probl
ceptible and intellectual deepening» that can
malism nor technicism, but, for Baudrier, w
alectical reality» of music.17
Reflections on temporality, therefore, are
lish the comprehensibility of an art that, in th
have gradually lost contact with the listener an
an abstraction or a purely solipsistic experience
World War, when technical and linguistic re
composers and musicologists found themselv
tween technicism and expression, between
adapting to the needs of the listener. This h
only at the sociological level but also in the
phy.
A basic contribution to overcoming what we may consider the most
tormenting dilemma of twentieth-century music has come from a group of
American musicologists and composers, who, since the 1960s, have com
bined compositional, analytical, and performance practice with a profound
philosophical study of the foundations and meaning of music-making.
Their work is based especially on the phenomenology of Husserl and Mer
leau-Ponty, but they have also broadened the range of their philosophical
interests to include Cassirer, Bergson, James, Heidegger, and Suzanne
Langer. Musicians and musicologists such as Thomas Clifton, Douglas Roy
Bartholomew, Judith Irene Lochhead, Lawrence Ferrara, Alfred Schutz,

17 Yves Baudrier, «Avec Igor Stravinsky», in Musique russe. Etudes réunies par Pierre
Souvtchinsky, Paris, PUF, 1953,1, pp. 139-149.

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20TH CENTURY 207

and others, though almost unknown in Italy until recently,18 deserve great
credit for establishing a «problematics of limits»19 around the crucial issues
of musical aesthetics, which were otherwise at risk of being monopolized
by a dualism between a technical and a semantic analysis of the subjects in
question.
On the one hand, Langer's aesthetics has been used by some of them20
to overcome any positivistic obstacle to musicology, making straight the
road to legitimate research about what is spécifie to music in its symbolic
and imaginative aspects and emphasizing the temporal makeup of this art.
In the footsteps of Cassirer and neo-Kantian transcendentalism Langer de
serves credit for having succeeded in justifying theoretically ali those as
pects of music that a scientific orientation is inclined to exclude or demote
to second rank. Nonetheless, the excessive weight given to the virtuality of
the art and to its connection to the dynamics of a sense of life has led the
American philosopher to make a sharp séparation between the artistic élé
ment and the materiality of the phenomenon, thereby falling into a typically
idealistic quandary. On the other hand, the phenomenological method em
braced by these musician-philosophers has allowed them to combine the
need for an analytical and scientifically grounded description of music with
the acknowledgement that this art maintains an unbreakable bond with ex
ternal reality and with the perceptive experience of listening, as well as with
the world of human feelings. Recourse to intentionality serves to justify the
epistemological status of the musical object as a noematic pole correlated
to a particular way of understanding music as a vital experience. Moreover,
it has led to the récognition that musical experience is a privileged sphere
within which a «logie of the phenomena» is at work - this concept is also
derived from Husserl - and it allows one to identify in musical temporality
not only a reflection of psychic life, but also the objective articulation of a
logie intrinsie to perceptible matter, for which technical analysis is one of the
preferred descriptive tools. In this way the phenomenological contribution
has been appropriately integrated both with a focus on music as a symbolic
form in Langer's sense of the term, and with a hermeneutics of meaning

18 See «The American phenomenology of music», in Axiomathes, Quaderni del centro

studi per la filosofia mitteleuropea (ed. by Roberto Miraglia), no. 2, Sept. 1995; see also Al
fred Schutz, «Fragments of phenomenology of music», ed. by F. Kersten, in In search of mu
sical method, ed. by F. J. Smith, New York, Gordon & Breach, 1976.
19 R. Miraglia, «Il quadro generale di una fenomenologia statunitense della musica»,
Axiomathes, no. 2, Sept. 1995, p. 170.
20 In particular Thoman Clifton in Music and heard: a study in applied phenomenology,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983. In this regard, see R. Miraglia, «H quadro generale».

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208 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

and existence such as outlined in Heidegger

ney made by these writers has been shown t
and elasticity, proving that it is up to the ta
any and ali historical periods and geograp
found its most important testing ground in
- from Ives to Cage to Elliott Carter.22
Reflection on temporality is also the acid t
cal experiments, so much so that equally im
space, acoustic material, and structure have
the most significant experiments in post-D
namely French spectral music, grounds its
tional procédures in a precise concept of m
son, with implicit reference also to Gilles Del
of répétition. The most important exponen
(1946-1998) affirms, in fact, an essentiel unit
development in music, understanding by the
organized' and by the second, succession in
fore, unlike serial music, does not imply
acoustic material and of basic motivic nuclei
«the musical base is the change from one
by the composer and perceived as such by
element is a matter of relative indifférence c
of the composer, which is to follow a mus
sponds to the movement and psychic tension
In a similar vein to Grisey's, though in a di
mut Lachenmann (1935) combined practice
on time and musical creativity, paying carefu
between musician and listener. In opposit
sought to identify a link between tempor
stead of dealing with «sterile parameters»
namics, composing music, for Lachenman
and mobilizing the most complex qualities
of musicality should go beyond pure sonor
pitch and duration, to deal instead with a

21 This is especially true of Lawrence Ferrara: see

Ferrara, Philosophy and analysis of music in Axiomath
22 See L. Bianchi, «La musica contemporanea statu
gici», ibid., pp. 251-271. On the relationship between
péen théories of musical analysis, see A. Mazzoni, «F
analisi musicale», ibid., pp. 226-249.
23 See Jean Baillet, Gerard Grisey, Milano, Ricord

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 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC IN THE 20th CENTURY 209

compositional élaboration. For the German composer «every scale should

include an acoustical aspect that is transformed, that overcomes control in
quantitative terms [...], that instead passes through différent acoustical, or
more than acoustical, qualities».24 His research, therefore, belongs beyond
linguistic or stylistic congruency and focuses either on temporal complexity
of a Bergsonian stamp - meaning by this the 'energetic' and dialectical as
pects of creativity - or on the «sensitizing of listening» in an implicitly phe
nomenological sense. Indeed, for Lachenmann «the composer should make
possible new forms of listening, creating situations of 'liberated perception'
by virtue of a new illumination and transformation of what is familiar».
Other, stili younger, composers have addressed and are addressing
these thèmes in their compositional activity. One could say that, aside from
the philosophers considered above, it has been more the musicians and
musicologists who have contributed in various degrees to the development
of a solidly grounded discipline of music philosophy, which is not only a
spécifie characteristic of the twentieth century, but which offers a wealth of
perspectives in the current cultural debate. Of course, the framework pre
sented here cannot help but seem sélective and full of gaps. The work of
recognizing the philosophy implicit in the writings and statements of com
posers and musicologists would open an enormous field of study that lies
beyond the purely introductory aims of this article.25 For this reason music
philosophy today should turn its attention first of ali to the writings of mu
sicians, not only so as to acquire some benefit, in the sense of painting a
global picture of contemporary musical-philosophical thought, but espe
cially to overcome the schism between musicological knowledge and philo
sophical reflection that has been a constant in contemporary musicology,
and which has weighed negatively on every aspect of the discipline. The
problem of time, as we have seen, is a field of research in common, and the
phenomenological approach involved in it can allow us to leave behind cer
tain préjudices and methodological quandaries, such as those derived from
the antithèses of subjectivity and objectivity, autonomy and heteronomy,
technique and meaning, symbol and material, music and language, which
are often encountered at the aesthetic and musicological level. The individ
uai points of view that we have rapidly passed in review, though differing

24 See Des paradis éphémères, Entretien avec H. Lachenmann, par Peter Szendy, livre
programme, Paris, Festival d'Automne, 1993.
25 A decisive rôle in catalyzing research in music philosophy in the direction outlined
here is stili played by other institutions that lie outside both the musicological academy and
philosophical specialism: for example, Ircam in Paris, the Cahiers publications, the School of
Music and Philosophy of Maratea (directed by Antonio De Lisa), the journal Sonus, the Semi
nario permanente di Filosofia della musica at the University of Milan (founded and directed by
Giovanni Piana) and the on-line journal De Musica.

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210 CARLO MIGLIACCIO

widely, are the constellation of a disciplina

has not as yet acquired either universali
haps lays no claim to acquiring them. It is
consists, as well as its nature as a sourc
both the musicology and the philosophy of

Carlo Migliaccio

(English translation by Anne Goodrich Heck)

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