Abstract
In this chapter, Cage’s proto-phenomenological hunches provide openings for key concepts from Marion. Givenness and freedom, the heuristic of the icon and the idol, and the saturated phenomenon conceptually assist a theological reading of the ubiquitous music celebrated in 4'33". This chapter also introduces sacramental dimensions for thinking about sonic ubiquity. The theological appeal to Marion does not entail a phenomenological revision of insights from Cage. Rather, phenomenological grammar approximates the charitable mystery that music provides—a constant sense of what Christians might call grace that permeates the world perceptibly and indeterminately, without regard for verification. Still, neither Cage’s musical invention nor Marion’s phenomenological concepts operate as normative tools. Instead, both indicate a generosity that needs no supporting musical or philosophical framework to announce its nearness or justify its existence.
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Notes
- 1.
The use of Marion here does not follow chronological or developmental order, and a comprehensive review of Marion’s projects will not be necessary for our purposes. Rather, selections from his argumentation regarding his icon/idol heuristic, givenness, and the saturated phenomenon will be deployed as approximate guides for discovering how a piece like 4'33" participates in the instantiation of gifts from God.
- 2.
Heidegger deserves censure and perhaps even intellectual protest against the use of his work given his anti-Semitism. But perhaps his thoughts can be retrieved and even redeemed(?) in spite of his failings as a human being. For an English translation of writings that critics believe display Heidegger’s anti-Semitism, see Heidegger 2016.
- 3.
For a more thorough definition of metaphysics, see Robin Le Poidevin, “What is metaphysics?”, in Le Poidevin 2009, pp. xvii–xxii.
Within theological discourse, see especially the writings of Emmanuel Falque as challenging the need to discard metaphysics.
- 4.
Merleau-Ponty 1981, pg. xvii.
- 5.
See Chap. 4.
- 6.
May and Parkes 1996.
- 7.
Heidegger writes perhaps the most efficient summation of phenomenological stance toward the world, “Welt weltet.,” in “Die Gefahr,” in Martin Heidegger 1994, pg. 47.
- 8.
Merleau-Ponty 1981.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Hart 2013, pg. 32.
- 12.
The theoretical maneuvering involved in joining faith commitments and phenomenological method with theological concerns is complex and exceeds the scope of this argument. I encourage curious readers to consult the references below and elsewhere for more detailed and worthy introductions to the fire and light of their thinking.
For Marion, Henry, Chrétien, and others, see Janicaud 2001. For an introduction to the theological turn in Lévinas, who was deceased by the time of Janicaud’s compilation of essays, see Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, Duquesne Studies, Philosophical Series (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969). Not mentioned above is Jean-Yves Lacoste, also a pivotal thinker in this movement, and Paul Ricoeur , both included in the Janicaud volume of essays. For a more detailed introduction to Lacoste, see Lacoste 2004. For a North American perspective, see Benson and Wirzba 2010.
- 13.
Morgan 2014, pp. 1–4. The complexity and contours of Lévinas’s thought exceed the discussion here. See in the “Introduction,” 1–15, a fuller discussion from Morgan of four key “features” in the thought of Lévinas: (1) the Holocaust, (2) Judaism and religious texts, (3) Western philosophy, and (4) twentieth-century ethical debates.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Henry 2015, pp. 170–71, 255–62. The original French title is Henry 2000.
See also, Henry 2002a, pp. 220–21. The original French title is Henry 1996.
Those two titles are part of a triptych rounded out by a final posthumously published work, Henry 2012 translated from Henry 2002b.
For recent introductions to the thought of Henry, see Rivera 2015.
O’Sullivan 2006.
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
Alfred Schultz, “Fragments on the Phenomenology of Music,” in In Search of Musical Method, F.J. Smith, ed. (London: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers 1976), 23–71. F. Joseph Smith “Toward a Phenomenology of Music: A Musician’s Composition Journal,” in Philosophy of Music Education Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1995): 21–33. Clifton 1983.
- 20.
One example of Ricoeur deployed in ethnomusicology is Simonett 2001. Of course, Ricoeur also stands within the locus of religious innovation in phenomenology . Yet his hermeneutic approach strives to maintain a separation between “religious allegiance” and philosophical undertaking. In addition to Ricoeur’s contribution in the Janicaud volume, see also Morny Joy, “Paul Ricoeur, Solicitude, Love, and the Gift,” in Bornemark and Ruin 2008.
- 21.
Benson 2003.
- 22.
Ibid., 189.
- 23.
In addition to theology and music, phenomenological method has been deployed for questions regarding race, gender, psychology, and cognitive science.
- 24.
Zuckerkandl 1959.
- 25.
Denis Fisette, “Carl Stumpf,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009). See also http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stumpf/ [last accessed July 8, 2017].
- 26.
- 27.
See, for example, Zuckerkandl responding to Husserl’s use of music as an object exemplary of time by asserting, “Our hearing of time corresponds to our seeing and touching of space.” Zuckerkandl 1956, pg. 254. For Husserl’s discussion of temporality and melody, see Husserl and Welton 1999, pp. 194–96.
- 28.
Begbie, “Sound Theology: Meaning in Music,” 23–25.
- 29.
Begbie 2000, pg. 172.
- 30.
Ibid., 171–72.
- 31.
Of course, it is debatable whether the White Paintings actually participate in ventriloquy. In a sense, Cage prematurely misinterprets the White Paintings in part because he does not anticipate Rauschenberg’s later directions of abandon regarding the distribution and further showing of the artwork, which dissolve notions of authorship and what the canvases portray.
- 32.
Marion 2004, pg. 36.
- 33.
Ibid., 44.
- 34.
Ibid., 33.
- 35.
Ibid., 34.
- 36.
Chua in Begbie and Guthrie 2011, pg. 159.
- 37.
Chua 1999, pg. 240. Chua provides a modified translation from Richard Wagner, “Ein Ende in Paris,” Sämtliche Schriften, 1:135.
- 38.
Nietzsche 1964, pg. 124.
- 39.
- 40.
Marion 2002c, pg. 52.
- 41.
Ibid., 49.
Note that, in contrast to Kant, Marion removes the condition of causality for understanding freedom.
See Kant 1998. For example, Marion counters a statement like this one from Kant: “Thus freedom and nature, each in its full significance, would both be found in the same actions, simultaneously and without any contradiction, according to whether one compares them with their intelligible or their sensible cause” (537).
- 42.
For a more pointed excursus regarding the nuances and challenges of developing a Christian (and self-stated Reformed) “theo-acoustics” with regard to deafness and audism (prejudice based upon hearing), see Webb 2004, pp. 51–55.
- 43.
See photograph of 4'33" score published by CF Peters in 1961 in Kyle Gann 2010, pg. 184.
- 44.
One3: 4'33" (0’00”), John Cage Music Manuscript Collection, JPB 95-3 Folder 938, Performing Arts Research Collection, New York Public Library, New York, NY.
- 45.
Derrida 1992, pp. 16–18. Derrida’s excursus exceeds the discussion here, and the reader is encouraged to review the pages referenced here for further detail.
- 46.
Ibid., 10–33.
- 47.
Marion 2008, pg. 94.
- 48.
Ibid., 91.
For a historical introduction into the “bracketing” method that Marion is here deploying, see Husserl’s explanation of the phenomenological ἐποχή, or suspension of judgment, in Husserl and Welton 1999, 65–67.
- 49.
NRSV, Matt. 25:37–39.
- 50.
- 51.
Marion 2002a, pg. 199.
- 52.
Kant 1998, pg. 212, A80/B106.
- 53.
Kant 1971, pp. 118, A80/B06.
- 54.
Kant 1998, pg. 212, A80/B106.
An elaborate excursus detailing the connections of these categories between Aristotle, Kant, and the intervening contributions of Descartes , Husserl, and Heidegger, with Marion’s phenomenological innovation surpasses my aim to identify sonic ubiquity as a realm in which saturated phenomena occur.
- 55.
- 56.
Marion 2002a, 216.
See also Sander van Maas, “On Preferring Mozart,” Bijdragen 65, no. 1 (2004): 107.
- 57.
Marion in Hart 2007, pg. 394.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
Marion 2008, pp. 47–48. Marion also writes, “The banality of the saturated phenomenon suggests that the majority of phenomena, if not all can undergo saturation by the excess in them of intuition over the concept or signification. In other terms, the majority of phenomena that appear at first glance as poor in intuition could be described not only as objects, but also as phenomena that intuition saturates and therefore exceeds all univocal concept.” ———, in Hart 2007, pg. 390.
- 60.
Speyr 1999, pg. 98. For a Protestant (and United Methodist) version of this type of thinking, see John Wesley and Charles Wesley, “Hymns on the Lord’s-Supper by John Wesley, ... And Charles Wesley, ... With a Preface, Concerning the Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice. Extracted from Dr. Brevint,” in Eighteenth Century collections online (London: printed by G. Paramore; and sold by G. Whitfield; and at the Methodist preaching-houses, in town and country, 1794), http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO?c=1&stp=Author&ste=11&af=BN&ae=T203406&tiPG=1&dd=0&dc=flc&docNum=CW122085429&vrsn=1.0&srchtp=a&d4=0.33&n=10&SU=0LRF&locID=nash87800. Last accessed July 24, 2017. Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, extracted from Dr. Brevint (London: G Paramore 1794; online at John Rylands University Library of Manchester: Religion and Philosophy), 18. John Wesley writes:
Our Saviour hath given us by his death three kinds of life: and he promises to nourish us in every one of them, by these tokens of bread and wine, which he hath made this sacrament. … [The first is] to set out as new and fresh the Holy sufferings, which purchased our Title to Eternal Happiness. The second is, both to represent and convey to our Souls, all necessary Graces to qualify us for it: and the third is, to assure us, that when we are qualified for it, God will faithfully render to us the Purchase. And these three make up the proper sense of those words, Take, eat, This is my Body.
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Liu, G.C. (2017). The Ubiquity of Music and Sacramental Life. In: Music and the Generosity of God. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69493-1_5
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