Schopenhauer 2/4/16

The Rolling Stones, You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I chose this song because it plays on notions of wants and desires, something we experience with the will. In the selections we read from Schopenhauer this week, Schopenhauer explores how, if at all, one might access the world beyond appearances, in a non-representational way. His answer to this, paradoxically, is music; however, only certain geniuses gain a glimpse into the Idea of the willing subject. He writes, “Therefore music is by no means like the other arts, namely a copy of the Ideas, but a copy of the will itself, the objectivity of which are the Ideas. For this reason the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence” (257). When listening to music, the hearer is capable of hearing the sound of the Will. Other arts allow us to lose our sense of becoming a willing subject, but music alone allows us to move beyond the will and interact with the Will. He continues, “Therefore music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without any accessories, and so also without the motives for them” (261).