Abstract

Again and again, we come across this sentence in Nietzsche’s writings and in his letters: »Without music, life would be a mistake.« What does it mean when Nietzsche says that as a philosopher, he is fundamentally a musician, as a philosopher, there’s nothing that concerned him more than the »fate of music« because without music, life would simply be a »mistake«. What are we to make of this explicitly philosophical affinity, radical devotion even, to music? Philosophical reason appears powerless against music’s higher aspiration or to put it differently, the impossibility of conceptualizing a feeling as exclusively subjective as the experience of music is self-evident. The article attempts to take a close look at these apparently disparate ideas, to approximate the affront that philosophy and music represent to each other as well as Nietzsche’s specific take on this affront. In this attempt, the concept of rhythm in contrast to unboundedness takes center stage.