Abstract

The philosophical work of Vladimir Jankélévitch lives on a narrow interweaving of metaphysics, morals and aesthetics. The metaphysical concepts he created and mobilized, as well as his method – which combines “paradoxology” and “mysteriology” – are find in the treatment of musical questions, as already are seen in action in his ethics. Amateur but dedicated pianist, Jankélévitch also possessed high musicological skills. Thus, in addition to monographic studies and essays on modern composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Fauré, among others, he left us elements of a philosophy of music in La musique et l’ineffable. The present article aims to present some of the fundamental themes of this connection between philosophy and musical experience. Fundamentally, music allows listening to the “irreversible”: a way of experiencing the essence of time, articulating lived time and the time of cosmos in a “stylized time” that ultimately is a great instant between two liminal and fecund silences.