Dwelling and the sacralisation of the air: A note on acousmatic music

This paper adapts Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of ‘dwelling’ in order to effect a liaison between acousmatic music and ecological concern. I propose this as an alternative to both the propagandist use of music as a means of protest and to using the science of ecology as a domain that might furnish new compositional means. I advance the interpretation that acousmatic music ‘occupies the air’ in ways that transform the meaning of that dimension. It allows the sky to be sky and the earth, earth. I use the precedent of bell ringing as an example of sonic activity that occupies the air in order to furthe

Passivity, being-with and being-there: care during birth

This paper examines how to best be with women during birth, based on a phenomenological description of the birth experience. The first part of the paper establishes birth as an uncanny experience, that is, an experience that is not only entirely unfamiliar, but even unimaginable. The way in which birth happens under unknowable circumstances (in terms of when, how, with whom…) creates a set of anxieties on top of the fundamental anxiety that emerges from the existential paradox by which it does not seem possible for a body to give birth to another body. Would homebirth provide a remedy to the uncanniness? The result yielded by medical studies is confirmed by the phenomenological perspective taken here: homebirth might be reassuring for some, but not for everybody; choice of birth place is important. Once the birth process starts happening, another layer of strangeness is added: it turns out to be an experience of radical passivity and waiting, normally. The question thus becomes how to best care for somebody who is exposed to uncanniness, passivity, and waiting. Martin Heidegger’s concepts of care and discourse prove useful in examining how to facilitate rather than interrupt this process. It becomes necessary to think beyond verbal communication towards a wider concept of communication that involves silence and intercorporeality. Birth requires a special kind of being-with as being-there

Language as the House of Being? How to Bring Intelligibility to Heidegger While Keeping the Excitement

At the core of Heidegger\u27s philosophy, there lies this nagging question: what is the link between language and being? Using a famous formulation by Heidegger as a guide (‘When we go to the well, when we go through the woods, we are always already going through the word “well”, through the word “woods”’), the analysis focuses on the connection Heidegger establishes between being (what woods and well ‘are’), understanding (something is understood ‘as’ woods or well), and temporality (human understanding of woods and well has changed since ancient Greek times, for example). Language is both what grants things their way to matter to us and thus to ‘be’ for us to the extent that we understand them, but language is also linked to a ‘happening’ (Geschehen) or an event so that things are not bound to their Geek being or current being: things ‘become being’ (seiend werden). Language is both the means for things to materialize in historical times: ‘being woods’ or ‘being a well,’ as well as a testimony to their entry into being. This is why language in its poetic use can make beings ‘more being’ (seiender)

“Dwelling-mobility”: An existential theory of well-being

In this article we offer an existential theory of well-being that is guided by Heidegger's later writings on “homecoming”. We approach the question of what it is about the essence of well-being that makes all kinds of well-being possible. Consistent with a phenomenological approach, well-being is both a way of being-in-the-world, as well as a felt sense of what this is like as an experience. Drawing on Heidegger's notion of Gegnet (abiding expanse), we characterise the deepest possibility of existential well-being as “dwelling-mobility”. This term indicates both the “adventure” of being called into expansive existential possibilities, as well as “being-at-home-with” what has been given. This deepest possibility of well-being carries with it a feeling of rootedness and flow, peace and possibility. However, we also consider how the separate notions of existential mobility and existential dwelling as discrete emphases can be developed to describe multiple variations of well-being possibilities

How We Became Authentic

This is a postprint (accepted manuscript) version of the article published in Ethos 37(1):148-53. The final version of the article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1352.2009.01034_1.x (login required to access content). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Accepted Manuscriptye

Coloquio sobre Dialéctica y Última lección (XII), no impartida, del semestre de verano de 1952.

Sin resume

Aesthetic Worlds: Rimbaud, Williams and Baroque Form

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of literary text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism

Composition is not research

Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015Composers in academic institutions are increasingly required to describe their activities in terms of 'research ' - formulating 'research questions', 'research narratives', 'aims' and 'outcomes'. Research plans and funding applications require one to specify the nature of the original contribution that will be made by a piece of music, even before it is composed. These requirements lead to an emphasis on collaborative work, technology and superficial novelty of format. Yet the very idea that musical composition is a form of research is a category error: music is a domain of thought whose cognitive dimension lies in embodiment, revelation or presentation, but not in investigation and description. It is argued here that the idea of composition as research is not only objectively false but inimical to genuine musical originality