A música como vontade e representação

The article presents a sustained reflection on the systematic place of music in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Rather than targeting the particular doctrines and details of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music, the article focuses on the systematic grounding of music in Schopenhauer’s transcendental theory of the world. At the center of the investigation stands the structural and substantial integration of art in general and of music in particular into first philosophy in Schopenhauer.The article places Schopenhauer’s metaphysical elevation of music into the context of his twofold consideration of the world as will and as representation and examines his productive appropriation of Plato and Kant. Throughout the focus is on Schopenhauer’s philosophical project of articulating the twofold but unitary constitution of the world. The six sections of the article address, in turn, the unificatory intent of Schopenhauer’s philosophy with regard to metaphysics and ethics, to metaphysics and aesthetics, to ethics and aesthetics, to art and philosophy, to music and world and to will and representation.