Kantian Time and Space in Music
Subject Areas : Philosophy
Keywords: Time, space, Kant, music, Beethoven,
Abstract :
In “Critique of Judgment” Kant deals with Judgment of Taste and besides this, he also defines the position of arts by bringing examples based on beauty (fineness), agreeability and sublimity. It is exactly here where except for poetry for which he considers a very particular position, he cannot give a distinctive position to any other art. In Kant’s view, music has the most suspending position among all arts. For Kant, music is sometimes an agreeable art and sometimes a fine one. The Suspending place of this art appears due to Kant’s uncertainties in making decisions in examples he brings for the development and clarity of his aesthetics. For some reasons which are not among the basic elements of his judgment, he sometimes puts music outside his aesthetic theories. One of these reasons is “Transience”. In a part of “Critique of Judgment”, he classifies music outside fine arts because it produces transient mood, while he had never considered transience and time directly as an essential and basic element in his judgments. In this article and with reference to Kant’s own theory and review of what he has said on the concept of Time and also his ideas elaborated “Critique of Judgment”, we try to demonstrate that if Kant had adjusted his thoughts more precisely to his classification of arts, then he would place music at the highest position.
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