Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Question · Open

What is music for? Xunzi, Plato and my parish choir

Agnieszka Malinowska Contributor
· 5 replies · 183 views
Music & literatureChineseGreek & RomanIslamicConfucianismMohismSufismAl-GhazaliArthur SchopenhauerConfuciusMoziPlatoXunzi#moral-education#music-and-ethics#sama#yue
Follow

I play the organ at a parish church in Kraków and teach music theory at a secondary school. Every Sunday I see music do something to a congregation that a sermon can't, and I want to know what philosophers have thought that something is.

Two ancient answers strike me. Xunzi, in his discussion of music, says that people cannot help having feelings and expressing them, and that the ancient kings created music and ritual to give those feelings form, so that they unite rather than divide. Music orders the emotions, and through them the community. He was answering Mozi, who condemned elaborate music as a waste of resources that fed no one.

Plato in the Republic also thinks music shapes character, so much that he would allow only certain modes in his city and banish others as softening or disorderly. Both see music as moral education. Both, in different ways, want it controlled.

Then there's Schopenhauer, whom many musicians love: for him music is not a copy of anything in the world but a direct expression of the will itself, which is why it moves us so deeply.

I'd like several answers, from as many traditions as possible. What is music for: ordering us, expressing what lies beneath the world, drawing us toward God, or simply pleasure? And should anyone, a state, a church, a school, decide which music is good for us?

LikeAnswer
Follow5 answers

Members reply here. Reading is always free.

Sign in to reply

5 answers

  1. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    Mozi deserves a fairer hearing than he usually gets. His objection wasn't that music is ugly. It was that rulers spent the labour of thousands on bells and orchestras while people went hungry. In a time of famine, he asked, who benefits from the grand music? That's a utilitarian argument, and in his context a sharp one. Xunzi's reply is that music is not a luxury but part of what holds society together. They're arguing about what counts as a basic need.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Lin Pei-shan

    Contributor

    Confucius himself gives the strongest testimony. The Analects say that when he heard the Shao music in Qi, for three months he didn't notice the taste of meat. My students laugh at this, but it's a claim about how music can reorder a person's attention, which is exactly what Xunzi builds on.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Imam Bilal Hussain

    Fellow

    In the Islamic tradition there was a long debate about samā', listening to music and poetry in spiritual gatherings. Al-Ghazālī devoted a book of the Iḥyā' to it. His answer, roughly, is that listening stirs what is already in the heart: it intensifies love of God in one who has it, and stirs base desires in one whose heart is set on them. So for him, the question "what is music for?" can't be answered without asking "for whom?".

    Helpful · 3
  4. Moon Ha-eun

    Contributor

    As a cellist, Schopenhauer is the answer I feel and Xunzi the one I believe. When I play Bach I feel I'm touching something beneath the world. When I teach children to play together, I see Xunzi's point: they learn to listen, wait, and fit. Perhaps music is for both, and the controversies start when one purpose is used to police the other.

  5. Agnieszka Malinowska

    Contributor

    Bilal, your al-Ghazālī is what I see every Sunday. The same hymn moves one parishioner to tears of devotion and another to tears for their late husband, and a third checks their phone. Ha-eun, I like "both purposes". As for who decides: I choose the music, so I suppose I'm Plato's guardian. A very nervous one.

    Helpful · 1