Kant’s (Moderate) Musical Antiformalism: A Reply to Sousa

I thank Tiago Sousa for his thoughtful comments on Young (2020, 2021). I am grateful for the opportunity to revisit Kant’s thoughts on music, which I think I understand better now that I have read and responded to Sousa’s rejoinder. Before the end of this paper, I will concede what I take to be Sousa’s main point, namely, that there is a continuum from formalism to antiformalism concerning music and that Kant’s position is not at the strong antiformalist end of the spectrum. I must also concede that I was wrong when I said that Kant’s views on music are consistent. Before I make any concessions, however, I will argue that, even if Kant believes that instrumental music stimulates few aesthetic ideas, he was not a formalist in anything like the modern sense of the word. Evidence is available for the view that Kant believed that music is valuable as patterns of sound, evidence that neither Sousa nor Reiter (2021) marshals. I may seem to be making my case more difficult by drawing attention to this evidence, but bear with me and all will be revealed. The evidence to which I refer is found in passages from Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and other early writings (Kant 2011). In a remark from circa 1769, Kant writes that “Architecture (in the general sense) (the art of horticulture, etc.) is a discipline, likewise music. For in the former it is a matter of pleasing relations in the division of space, in the latter with regard to time” (311). In another remark, from either 1769 or 1770, Kant writes that the “arts are either formative or imitative. The latter are painting and sculpture. They concern either merely the form or also the material” (319). In this passage, Kant does not mention music. He identifies architecture, landscape gardening and some others as formative arts, but he would likely have included music among the formative arts since in the previous passage he associates architecture, horticulture and music. He also states that the “object pleases immediately in the intuition if its form fits with the law of coordination among appearances and facilitates sensible clarity and magnitude. Like symmetry in buildings and harmony in music” (131).

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