Ontology of Music

Nietzsche is among a handful of philosophers for whom music was a powerful force and an abiding influence. A pianist, improviser, and composer, he contemplated a career in music before abandoning it to pursue philology and philosophy. His stormy relationship with Richard Wagner – the man and his music – found ample expression in Nietzsche’s philosophical writing, from his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, to one of his last, The Case of Wagner. And remarks on the music of Beethoven, Bizet, Berlioz, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schumann, and others are sprinkled throughout Nietzsche’s corpus. Late in his career, Nietzsche bluntly concluded: “Without music, life would be an error” (TI, “Maxims and Barbs,” 33). But just what is music for Nietzsche? And what is it about music that he found so important and philosophically compelling? In a telling passage, he explains how one might wrongly answer these questions and, in so doing, suggests the route to a more adequate response. Entitled “ ‘Science’ as Prejudice,” section 373 of The Gay Science is framed by the claim that “scholars, insofar as they belong to the spiritual middle class, can never catch sight of the really great problems and question marks.” Among such scholars, one particular group is singled out for its intellectual inadequacy: