The Knower – the Object of Knowing – the Process of Knowing
The Secret of Success of Music
The Musical Process of Refine-ment of the Object of Cognition
The Musical Identification with the Truth
The Art of Musical Enlightenment
The Philosophical Gaining of Truth in Music
The Love of Truth
Like the scientific system of philosophy, music, too, distinguishes between the objects of knowledge, the subject which knows, and the process of knowing which links the subject and the object.
The secret of the success of music – particularly with the simple man, but just as much with the competent thinker – lies in the fact that music refines the structure of the object under consideration in a discrete manner.
We call it “the artistic form”, but also in part: the interpretation.
By means of this process of refinement, the musician brings the object of consideration in a most discrete and unobtrusive manner closer and closer to us listeners and to our self-awareness.
And in his music he employs the means of loving and patient, elucidating and apologetic explanation from the level of his heart.
Finally, music advances the identification of the infinitely refined, resounding object of consideration with our self- awareness, and we perceive the fulfilling unity of our inner truth with what previously appeared so separate from us – with the world, previously so estranged to us, with creation which previously unfolded so independent from us.
Brought about like magic and executed like a piece of art, this manifold identification of the music listener – who used to search for fulfilment in the outer world – with the resounding objects of fulfilment, appearing more and more glorious to us, accounts for the great charm of classical music and guarantees its success.
What makes music an ideal tool of comprehensive philosophical cognizing – as different from the common practice of philosophizing or scientifically analyzing in words and in writing – is the fact that music is able to stimulate our feeling and our understanding simultaneously to cognition.
And since philosophy means “love of truth”, and since love is unthinkable without the feeling being involved, we must assume that for philosophy, and beyond that for any kind of comprehensive acquisition of knowledge, music is a means of gaining knowledge more qualified than the common practice of verbal or written intellectual discussion – excluding poetry, for one thing, which is capable of stimulating the feeling more than intellectual discussion.