Japanese-Bulgarian Forum
The Philosophy and its
Other
Philosophical Laboratory,
organized by
Boyan Manchev and Futoshi Hoshino
Sofia, 19-20 September
2017,
Theater College Luben Groys
and New Bulgarian University
Scattered remarks, inspired
by the papers of Koichiro Kokubun and Bozhana Filipova
Dimka Gicheva-Gocheva
Addition to my commentary,
made yesterday, concerning
Middle voice
and philosophy by Koichiro Kokubun
1. The subject in the Categories and
the Metaphysics of Aristotle: τὸ ὑποκείμενον - the conceptual monster with three heads: syntactical, logical
and ontological.
2. The only verbal category in the middle voice:
κεῖσθαι,
Examples: ἀνάκειται, κάθηται.
3. The subject is hidden, but recognizable in the predicate in some
Indo-European languages. Hence, it is unmistakably clear who is the doer and
who is responsible for the deed described.
The overarching conclusion of approaches like Koichiro Kokubun with
regard to the ancient philosophy: the logos spoke through the earlier thinkers,
who were merely his mouthpieces;
The book of Michael Frede. A Free
Will. University of California Press, 2011, posthumously published.
Music as the other of philosophy
Music might be one of the most convincing candidates
for the other of philosophy, because
it is not only human, it is not only art and/or science. There is (according to
some philosophers) musica universalis,
musica divina.
*The Bulgarian colleagues from the
National Musical Academy and BAS and their books: Prof. Ilya Ionchev, Prof. Neva Kristeva, Prof.
Natasha Yapova, Prof. Christina Yapova, Assoc. Prof. Jordan Banev.
*The Pythagoreans and their strife to
the sublime cosmic music of the spheres. The utmost goal of the Pythagorean way
of life: to hear the divine celestial music. Rejected by Aristotle in the De caelo, Book Beta, ch.9, 290b12-291a 28.
Part 9
From all this it is clear that the theory that the movement of the stars produces a harmony, i.e. that the sounds they make are concordant, in spite of the grace and originality with which it has been stated, is nevertheless untrue. Some thinkers suppose that the motion of bodies of that size must produce a noise, since on our earth the motion of bodies far inferior in size and in speed of movement has that effect. Also, when the sun and the moon, they say, and all the stars, so great in number and in size, are moving with so rapid a motion, how should they not produce a sound immensely great? Starting from this argument and from the observation that their speeds, as measured by their distances, are in the same ratios as musical concordances, they assert that the sound given forth by the circular movement of the stars is a harmony. Since, however, it appears unaccountable that we should not hear this music, they explain this by saying that the sound is in our ears from the very moment of birth and is thus indistinguishable from its contrary silence, since sound and silence are discriminated by mutual contrast. What happens to men, then, is just what happens to coppersmiths, who are so accustomed to the noise of the smithy that it makes no difference to them. But, as we said before, melodious and poetical as the theory is, it cannot be a true account of the facts. There is not only the absurdity of our hearing nothing, the ground of which they try to remove, but also the fact that no effect other than sensitive is produced upon us. Excessive noises, we know, shatter the solid bodies even of inanimate things: the noise of thunder, for instance, splits rocks and the strongest of bodies. But if the moving bodies are so great, and the sound which penetrates to us is proportionate to their size, that sound must needs reach us in an intensity many times that of thunder, and the force of its action must be immense. Indeed the reason why we do not hear, and show in our bodies none of the effects of violent force, is easily given: it is that there is no noise. But not only is the explanation evident; it is also a corroboration of the truth of the views we have advanced. For the very difficulty which made the Pythagoreans say that the motion of the stars produces a concord corroborates our view. Bodies which are themselves in motion, produce noise and friction: but those which are attached or fixed to a moving body, as the parts to a ship, can no more create noise, than a ship on a river moving with the stream. Yet by the same argument one might say it was absurd that on a large vessel the motion of mast and poop should not make a great noise, and the like might be said of the movement of the vessel itself. But sound is caused when a moving body is enclosed in an unmoved body, and cannot be caused by one enclosed in, and continuous with, a moving body which creates no friction. We may say, then, in this matter that if the heavenly bodies moved in a generally diffused mass of air or fire, as every one supposes, their motion would necessarily cause a noise of tremendous strength and such a noise would necessarily reach and shatter us. Since, therefore, this effect is evidently not produced, it follows that none of them can move with the motion either of animate nature or of constraint. It is as though nature had foreseen the result, that if their movement were other than it is, nothing on this earth could maintain its character.
That the stars are spherical and are not selfmoved, has now been explained.
From all this it is clear that the theory that the movement of the stars produces a harmony, i.e. that the sounds they make are concordant, in spite of the grace and originality with which it has been stated, is nevertheless untrue. Some thinkers suppose that the motion of bodies of that size must produce a noise, since on our earth the motion of bodies far inferior in size and in speed of movement has that effect. Also, when the sun and the moon, they say, and all the stars, so great in number and in size, are moving with so rapid a motion, how should they not produce a sound immensely great? Starting from this argument and from the observation that their speeds, as measured by their distances, are in the same ratios as musical concordances, they assert that the sound given forth by the circular movement of the stars is a harmony. Since, however, it appears unaccountable that we should not hear this music, they explain this by saying that the sound is in our ears from the very moment of birth and is thus indistinguishable from its contrary silence, since sound and silence are discriminated by mutual contrast. What happens to men, then, is just what happens to coppersmiths, who are so accustomed to the noise of the smithy that it makes no difference to them. But, as we said before, melodious and poetical as the theory is, it cannot be a true account of the facts. There is not only the absurdity of our hearing nothing, the ground of which they try to remove, but also the fact that no effect other than sensitive is produced upon us. Excessive noises, we know, shatter the solid bodies even of inanimate things: the noise of thunder, for instance, splits rocks and the strongest of bodies. But if the moving bodies are so great, and the sound which penetrates to us is proportionate to their size, that sound must needs reach us in an intensity many times that of thunder, and the force of its action must be immense. Indeed the reason why we do not hear, and show in our bodies none of the effects of violent force, is easily given: it is that there is no noise. But not only is the explanation evident; it is also a corroboration of the truth of the views we have advanced. For the very difficulty which made the Pythagoreans say that the motion of the stars produces a concord corroborates our view. Bodies which are themselves in motion, produce noise and friction: but those which are attached or fixed to a moving body, as the parts to a ship, can no more create noise, than a ship on a river moving with the stream. Yet by the same argument one might say it was absurd that on a large vessel the motion of mast and poop should not make a great noise, and the like might be said of the movement of the vessel itself. But sound is caused when a moving body is enclosed in an unmoved body, and cannot be caused by one enclosed in, and continuous with, a moving body which creates no friction. We may say, then, in this matter that if the heavenly bodies moved in a generally diffused mass of air or fire, as every one supposes, their motion would necessarily cause a noise of tremendous strength and such a noise would necessarily reach and shatter us. Since, therefore, this effect is evidently not produced, it follows that none of them can move with the motion either of animate nature or of constraint. It is as though nature had foreseen the result, that if their movement were other than it is, nothing on this earth could maintain its character.
That the stars are spherical and are not selfmoved, has now been explained.
Translated by J. L. Stocks , accessed today, the 20th of
September, 2017 at: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/heavens.2.ii.html
* Plato: the Phaedo, 60 a: a dream had many times recurred to
Socrates and urged him frequently with the same words: ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔφη, μουσικὴν
ποίει και ἐργάζου !
... καὶ ἐμοὶ οὕτω
τὸ ἐνύπνιον, ὅπερ ἐπραττον, τοῦτο ἐπικελεύειν, μουσικὴν ποιεῖν, ὡς φιλοσοφίας μὲν οὔσης μεγίστης μουσικῆς, 61 a.
the Timaeus; especially at the end of the Republic 617 b-c; the Laws;
the Epinomis;
Latin and Byzantine developments
* The
heritage of Augustine and Boethius:
Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum (TML): more than 90 mediaeval treatises on the art and science
of music; all of them in Latin, most of them anonymous; the newer versions of Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG).
* The Byzantine encyclopaedia of
George Pachymer: Quadrivium vel Σύνταγμα τῶν τεσσάρων μαθημάτων, ἀριθμητικής, μουσικής, γεωμετρίας καὶ ἀστρονομίας. Constitution of the four sciences:
arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. Stephanou and P. Tannery, Quadrivium de Georges Pachymère [Studi e
Testi 94. Vatican City: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 1940]: 1, 3, 5-95,
97-199, 201-454.
* The Arab peripatetic
tradition and Kitab al-Adwar by
Safiaddin al-Urmavi, translated from the Turkish translation of the Arab
original by assoc. prof. dr. Jordan Banev and available only in the library of
the NMA. Safiyyüddin
Abdülmüm‘min Urmevi ve Kitâbü‘l-Edavârı на Dr. Uygun, Mehmet Nuri, Istanbul
1999.
The overall approach to music in
recent times only as musica humana:
it is created, composed or improvised, performed or recorded, criticized,
analysed and studied only as something exclusively human.
Conclusion: even in this
rigid and restricted conceptualizing of music only as musica humana, it might be the twin-sister of philosophy because
both of them are daughters of the Logos.
