Music and Morality

Abstract

Analytic philosophy in the last 50 years or so has focussed on music as a kind of aesthetic practice centred on the creation of musical objects seen to be valuable primarily for what are thought to be their intrinsic or purely musical features. One consequence of this purist focus is that philosophers have remained largely silent about the possible connections between music and morality, a topic that had been of prime interest to philosophers for centuries. This essay proposes a philosophical reorientation to return the attention of philosophy to the manifold connections between music and morality. The essay begins with an account of how contemporary philosophy arrived at its current position. The essay offers an account of the deep diversity of musical practices, providing an overview of the many functions that music serves in the complexities of the social, moral, political and cultural spheres. The essay then provides an analysis of the specific musical resources that enable music to contribute to the ethical life, followed by a discussion of the relationship between music and morality and the larger goal of the education of people in the ethos of their culture. The essay concludes with a postscript arguing that the relationship of musical practice to moral thought, action, behaviour, and character extends not only to the relation between music and morality considered as external to the practice of music making but also to what might be called the internal aspects of music such as the activities of musical composition and performance and musical genres, such as “absolute” or “pure” music, thought to be autonomous and thereby outside the realm of moral considerations.