Music, art, passion, reason, Job, Christianity, and the Romantic Era

Plotinus argues that the good musician will let his passion affect the strings, but the passion cannot affect the immaterial principle of melody. The melodic principle should govern the strings and their sound waves, and how the passions play itself out. Good music falls under this rational structure, rather than superseding the rational structure. He is here arguing for the dictation of the immaterial soul, or the part of us the uses abstract reason, over the rule of material body with its flood of passions. A choral in harmony can occasionally stand out and raise its own voice, but it only remains beautiful if the performers are well-governed and don't all try to raise their voices; the allusion being that discordant passions are a recipe for disaster, even a passion for humanity, which atheists falsely claim is the foundation for morality.

What of the Nietzschean who claims passionate music is better than rational music? Atonal jazz is wonderful music, music that gives greater importance to passion than the rational structure is above the serene music of the baroque era, where passion and emotion had to be fitted into a structure, unlike the music of the Romantic era, which unleashed passion and emotion. Music emphasizing desire over reason is more beautiful, and therefore more musical, and therefore more true to itself, than other blander forms of music.

There is far more going on here than music. The entire culture shifted in the Romantic era. Goethe helped to usher in an era that didn't allow stories to be governed by rigid reason, but instead wrote to champion desire. Philosophy was leaving works governed by strict logical principles and abandoned the desire for a proper systematic approach, under the likes of Aquinas (the medieval) and Kant (the enlightenment). Even theology has a shift, which is played out in Christian practice of the next 150 years.

Orthodox Christianity is dictated by truth propositions, what we believe or put our faith in is fundamental and good works flow from that. The darling of the Romantic era, Kierkegaard, is less concerned with truth questions and more concerned with relationships. Job's friends give Job theological propositions that are true, insofar as they can be found elsewhere in scripture, and they are set against the true hero of the story, Job, who has lousy truth propositions even to the point of arguing with God, but at least he spoke to God and not about God like Job's friends.

Historically, thought influenced by Plato places reason over desire. If I see a cupcake, my desires will tell me one thing and my reason will tell me quite another, especially if I'm trying to lose weight or train for some sporting event. Where there is conflict, let reason have reign, according to Platonic philosophy. Listening to our desires over reason brings us a moment of pleasure, but a month of despair.

So what's to be said of atonal jazz, or even music that is less concerned with the rational structure? Why would Plotinus value Mozart, the baroque musician, over Beethoven, who transitioned us into the Romantic movement in music? Beethoven is the moment of pleasure, where the music industry wound up because of the rejection of rationalism is the month of despair. Popular songs now are singing about fellatio, while high, and this is called music, and even worse, this is called poetry, and the unforgivable sin, some even call this modern music philosophy. This isn't a slippery slope, this is the rejection of reason.

Art today is art for art's sake, the desire is more important than anything we recognize as reason. Today we have Piss Christ - a figurine of Jesus submerged into a jar of urine - and call that art. Art before the Romantic era was John Milton. G.K. Chesterton points out in Heresies, the true value of Milton here in that he's better than these modern artists in every way. After reading Milton's Paradise Lost, no one can forget the arguments Satan made, against God's ill treatment of him. The Satan character, for a brief moment becomes sympathetic, and even persuasive. Christians reading the book are discombobulated. Not only did Milton surpass these Piss Christ artists in his piety and worship of God, he even surpassed them in his defiance of God, he even understood evil better than they do.

One cupcake is harmless, even enjoyable. Beethoven is enjoyable. Thousands of cupcakes over a period of time will leave you disfigured. Maybe one cupcake is reasonable and can be fit within the rational life. Leaving reason is unreasonable.