FUNDAMENTALS OF PURE MUSICAL BEING: A.F. LOSEV

The task of developing an ontology of music is one of the most difficult. Despite the fact that music has repeatedly become the subject of philosophical reflection, musical being itself remains unidentified in the overwhelming majority of cases. Music is considered either as a representation of the sphere of subjectivity (Hegel) or as a phenomenon of the world will (Schopenhauer). In the worst cases, attempts at a philosophical understanding of music are reduced to a psychophysiological or physical-materialistic explanation of the phenomenon. At the same time, the need for an ontology of music is due to the fact that music itself is a configuration of being. Not a representation of any being outside of it, but an independent configuration of being that requires a very specific construction of categories and concepts for its philosophical understanding. The philosophy of music presupposes the formulation of pure musical being in the system of philosophical concepts. Will the categories of ancient or European metaphysics be relevant here? If we take the main directions of ancient and European ontology, we will have to conclude that they are inadequate to the task of developing an ontology of pure musical being. Both antiquity and the New Age think of being in a fundamentally non-musical way. Plastic-sculptural, perspective-picturesque, but not musical. Musical being itself requires a different ontological construction.