Listening Without a Listener : Understanding the Self and the Activity of Listening to Music Through Nishitani Keiji’ Philosophy

Abstract

In our everyday life, music is taken as an object – an object that is helpful in one sense or the other: Music can help alleviate sadness, lift the mood if life seems a bit dull, or enhance an already great atmosphere. In other words, music is often approached as an instrument of so-called affective scaffolding. Yet music is more than an instrument which can be used to gain desired affective states. In the present paper, the possibility of an experience of listening without a listener is examined – that is, an experience where music is not separated from one’s self into an instrument, into an external object. The analysis of listening without a listener carried out here will be based on Nishitani Keiji’s philosophy of emptiness. Additionally, I will critically employ the concept of affective scaffolding and elaborate the possibility of listening without a listener in relation to this concept. The aim of this paper is to show that there are hidden depths in our relation to music, which are obscured by taking music as an object and by approaching it instrumentally. Further, it will be argued that by illuminating these hidden depths we can, moreover, understand ourselves more deeply, to reveal the empty nature of our selves.