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One point must be kept clear: Most philosophers are not asking whether there really is, say, a door here or a wall there. The question is, what does it mean when we say thus and so is a thing of a certain kind—for instance, spinto, garbage (one person’s garbage is another’s treasure), good music, bad music, modernism, postmodernism, Romanticism, bel canto, ad infinitum…12 Therefore, what counts, and the related problem of change (the fact that the world around us constantly changes, and not only that, but our minds, the very means by which we understand, categorize, and evaluate those changes, are themselves constantly changing) are core problems of philosophy. But, as we all know, they are also core problems in teaching, art, and life itself.
These problems and the questions that arise from them provide the tensions and contradictions that both complicate and energize the following discussions. They are not offered to obfuscate, complicate, or intimidate. These contradictions and tensions are employed to clarify, awaken, and sharpen critical, reflexive insight. They are means to an end.
It is essential to be clear about what that end is in the case of the present undertaking, for the arguments brought forth here necessarily develop over fairly extended trajectories. To be clear about the end, we must also be clear about the beginning as well. The first three chapters are designed to present the central themes with which the rest of the book deals (some of which already have been hinted at in this introduction). First, and most important, are differences and conflicts between the rational and the a-rational (the aesthetic). Second are the links between this conflict and the problem of values, which are fundamental to ethics and aesthetics. And finally we discuss the questions concerning the nature of creativity and the situation of classical music in the twenty-first century.
This brings us to what is meant by the ends, or the goals of these discussions. They revolve around the aforementioned situation of classical music, a situation that in many ways exemplifies the gradual transformation of the rationalization of the world into the radical commodification of the world.