Música: a arte de expressão da vontade em Arthur Schopenhauer

Abstract

This paper proposes an investigation into the philosophical conception of musical terms in Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and as Representation (1819). This theme requires the corresponding task of assimilating his understanding of the world from the double meaning observed in the title of the work. The space of philosophical consideration that the author allocates to music allows him, because of his aesthetic-metaphysical conception, to understand musical art as an analogy of the metaphysical structure of the world, escaping the mediations of the human form of knowledge. Music, in Schopenhauer's definition of the world, manages to reflect the world in its essence. The problem of the dissertation is to find out if and how, technically, from the perspective of the structure of music, Schopenhauerian metaphysics is sustained. In order to elucidate the aforementioned conceptions and tackle the problem, the first step is to clarify Schopenhauer's concept of the World, with a view to clarifying his conception of metaphysics as Will, which underpins the thesis on music. Secondly, with the specific aim of grasping the particularity of music in this metaphysical conception, the way in which the technical concepts of musical theory used by the philosopher demonstrate the analogy between music and the essence of the world must be analyzed, this being the key question of the investigation. The third step, finally, consists of conceptually deepening the notion of Schopenhauer's Will by establishing, with formal clarity, the link between the physical sphere (through which musical sound is perceived) and the metaphysical sphere (the aesthetic sphere, which includes music as elevated art). It is based on the Schopenhauerian hypothesis that an effective understanding of the way of being of music is capable of showing by analogy what the Will is, the metaphysical origin of the World. The aim of this paper is to clarify how the physical occurrences indicated by the technical terminology of Schopenhauer's music theory are able to demonstrate this metaphysical notion. In order to successfully unfold this relationship, it is necessary: to effectively understand the structure of Schopenhauer's metaphysics, and what music actually is and what its metaphysical function is in this thesis.