Abstract

Few philosophers of music dealing with the meanings of music mention its political and social meanings. Since these are non-controversial meanings of music, the omission is surprising, but revealing. Using John Dewey's metaphysics and his theory of aesthetics I offer philosophical support for the work of ethnomusicologists and others, who consider music in its cultural context I argue that the meanings of music, including its expressive properties, are a matter of connections to context. I suggest that only by assuming the full reality of ordinary experience and by looking at music in the context of 'the good life' is it possible to see music's meaning. ;I try to demonstrate the flaws in the approaches of several prominent philosophers of music, such as Eduard Hanslick, Susanne Langer, Peter Kivy, and Jerrold Levinson, and offer a Deweyan alternative. This alternative, in part, suggests that music resonates with non-musical experiences of the world. Therefore a rigid distinction between 'the musical' and 'the extra-musical' is a mistake if one is trying to uncover the meanings of music. ;There are several reasons why this distinction has been entrenched. One is the 'art for art's sake' approach to aesthetics which ignores any instrumental uses or effects of art. Another is the result of the metaphysical assumptions of analytic philosophers who try to understand a phenomenon considered in relative isolation, and not contextually. There are also reasons which pertain to the specific historical rise of concert-hall music in the nineteenth century. ;I offer an interactionist, non-reductive, fully naturalistic account of experience which is reliant, ultimately, on the idea of emergent complexity. If, as I argue, an object is what it is experienced as then we are in a position to consider the concept of 'immanent meaning' in which meanings which might have once been referential become built into habits of perception. In this way the social and political meanings of music can be seen to be part of the object of perception, and not external to the experience of music