Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Book Review: The William Desmond Reader, Renee Köhler Ryan

Renée Köhler-Ryan

This is a book review of The William Desmond Reader, edited by Christopher Ben Simpson. The review focuses on the ethical implications of Desmond's work, but places these in the broader context of his philosophy of the between, or metaxu.

The Routledge Companion To Philosophy And Music, Theodore Gracyk, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections:

• general issues
• emotion
• history
• figures
• kinds of music
• music, philosophy and related disciplines

Silent Music, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

Most discussions of the nature of music begin with the vague notion that it is the art of sound. The next step is usually to argue that though sounds may be necessary for music, they are not sufficient, since there are sonic arts other than music, most notably linguistic performance arts, such as poetry and drama. However, at some point the issue of silence inevitably comes up. Most theorists want to allow the possibility of musical silence, that is, silence that is part of a musical work or performance, though this seems to require rejecting the necessity of sounds for …

Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania

Andrew Kania

Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.