Abstracts of issue 12-13 (2000)

The Music Aesthetics of Schopenhauer: A Philosophical and Music-Aesthetic Critical Comment

This article, mainly an introduction to Schopenhauer’s music aesthetics, has two basic objects. First, the research of the philosophical preconditions of understanding Schopenhauer’s music aesthetics, and second, a critical comment on certain problems that this particular aesthetics put in view. For the first object, it is necessary to attempt a reconstruction of the wider theoretical frame that conditions the music aesthetics of the philosopher, through examination of the gnoseological parameter of his philosophy and the role that aesthetics play in it, considering that for Schopenhauer the aesthetic experience is a peculiar and liberating form of knowledge. The rejection of the historical dimension, the demand for immediacy in the recognition of the revealed Wesen and the abandonment of Verstand in the construction of the aesthetic judgement concerning music, are some of the problems that this article examines.

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