McBrayer, Benjamin
(2017)
MAPPING MYSTERY: BRELET, JANKÉLÉVITCH, AND PHENOMENOLOGIES OF MUSIC IN POST-WORLD WAR II FRANCE.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
This dissertation examines the revival of interest in interplay of music and mystery in post-1945 France, revisiting but also reconfiguring recent debates on the merits of the ineffable in music. The framework of my project brings into focus, amidst post-WWII French philosophies of music, what can be seen as two polar regions of mysteriology. At one end, there is the musicologist Gisèle Brelet, who employs the conventional terms of epistemology constructing what amounts to a metaphysics of music. At the other, there is the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, who seeks to expose at every turn the ultimate metaphoricity of any such metaphysics, advocating a radical re-creation of his subject matter in the process of reflecting on it.
As I show, however dissimilar, these approaches subsisted on, as well as marked the limits of, a broader intellectual milieu—that of an existential phenomenology committed to studying the intentionality of conscious experience. The Introduction discusses contemporaneous philosophical, and Chapter 1 traces historical, underpinnings of the new urge to register the aesthetic experience of music as “ontological mystery,” an experience hinging on a variety of modes of awareness of an Other. When approached via musical sound, the question of the Other becomes a problem of time—the medium through which the experience of the Other happens.
Both Brelet and Jankélévitch posited, albeit in differing ways, that through music we become conscious of a time that is other than the way in which we experience time in our ordinary lives. In phenomenology, the Other can take various, but related forms—most commonly, it is the alterity of another consciousness, of the world in-itself, or of history. Chapters 2–4 explore in turn each of these forms and their corresponding temporalities as they appear in the work of Jankélévitch and Brelet. Chapter 2 centers on the mystery of intra-human and inter-human time, of time within and between subjects. Chapter 3 addresses the mystery of ecological time, or the temporal relationship between human beings and the natural world. Chapter 4 investigates the mystery of historical time and its manifestations in the dialectics of music.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
| Creators | Email | Pitt Username | ORCID  |
|---|
| McBrayer, Benjamin | M | bmm71 | |
|
| ETD Committee: |
| Title | Member | Email Address | Pitt Username | ORCID |
|---|
| Committee CoChair | Nisnevich, Anna | | | | | Committee CoChair | Root, Deane | | | | | Committee Member | Mecchia, Giuseppina | | | | | Committee Member | Moe, Eric | | | | | Committee Member | Fallon, Robert | | | |
|
| Date: |
28 September 2017 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
20 March 2017 |
| Approval Date: |
28 September 2017 |
| Submission Date: |
14 April 2017 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
256 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Music |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
philosophy of music, existential phenomenology, aesthetic experience, postwar France, mystery, intellectual history |
| Date Deposited: |
28 Sep 2017 21:36 |
| Last Modified: |
28 Sep 2017 21:36 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/31483 |
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