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Philosophers wrangling with the weightiest of subjects: the flute

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  • Obā-sanObā-san

    Eugene Thacker said:

    Nietzsche, commenting on pessimism, once castigated Schopenhauer for taking things too lightly. He writes:

    ...Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really—played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that. And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute... what? Is that really—a pessimist?

    We know that Schopenhauer did possess a collection of instruments, and we also know that Nietzsche himself composed music. There is no reason to think that either of them would ever banish music from the Republic of philosophy.
    But Nietzsche’s jibes at Schopenhauer are as much about music as they are about pessimism. For the pessimist who says no to everything and yet finds comfort in music, the no-saying of pessimism can only be a weak way of saying yes—the weightiest statement undercut by the flightiest of replies. The least that Schopenhauer could’ve done is to play the bass.

    I’m not a big fan of the flute, or, for that matter, wind instruments generally. But what Nietzsche forgets is the role that the flute has historically played in Greek tragedy. In tragedy, the flute (aulos) is not an instrument of levity and joy, but of solitude and sorrow. The Greek aulos not only expresses the grief of tragic loss, but it does so in a way that renders weeping and singing inseparable from each other. The classicist Nicole Loraux calls this the mourning voice. Set apart from the more official civic rituals of funerary mourning, the mourning voice of Greek tragedy constantly threatens to dissolve song into wailing, music into moaning, and the voice into a primordial, disarticulate anti-music. The mourning voice delineates all the forms of suffering—tears, weeping, sobbing, wailing, moaning, and the convulsions of thought reduced to an elemental unintelligibility.

    In the collapsed space between the voice that speaks and the voice that sings, pessimism discovers its mourning voice. Pessimism: the failure of sound and sense, the disarticulation of phone and logos.

    Have we rescued Schopenhauer from Nietzsche? Probably not. Perhaps Schopenhauer played the flute to remind himself of the real function of the mourning voice—sorrow, sighs, and moaning rendered indistinguishable from music, the crumbling of the human into the unhuman. Failure par excellence of pessimism.


  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    I wonder if this is why I prefer wind instruments over brass
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    woodwind, I mean
  • KlinotaxisKlinotaxis
    kill living beings
    my favorite philosopher, terry davis, only plays the trombone
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    Mad Cow Disease said:

    I wonder if this is why I prefer wind instruments over brass

    but you can't say brass without
  • Imipolex GImipolex G
    Touch the cow. Do it now.
    ass
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    besides, i think he's

    tooting his own horn
  • glennmagusharveyglennmagusharvey
    what?

    horns are in woodwind quintets
  • Yarrun XIXYarrun XIX
    Whores! we want "poems that kill."
    Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
    guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
    and take their weapons leaving them dead
    As a tax-paying woodwind player, I'm not going to put up with one of those weasely French horn players.

    Not that I have anything against French horn players; some of my best friends are French horn players. I just don't want them in our schools and corrupting our youth.
  • Sredni VashtarSredni Vashtar
    “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”
    You may denounce the French horn, but can you deny that, at the end of the day, you yourself are nothing more or less than a SAX MANIAC?!
  • Yarrun XIXYarrun XIX
    Whores! we want "poems that kill."
    Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
    guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
    and take their weapons leaving them dead
    Not really a maniac.

    It's more like having an extra finger that you forget about until you're at the bar and you need to win a free drink.
  • OdradekOdradek
    My dreams exceed my real life
    Yarrun XIX said:

    As a tax-paying woodwind player, I'm not going to put up with one of those weasely French horn players.


    Not that I have anything against French horn players; some of my best friends are French horn players. I just don't want them in our schools and corrupting our youth.

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