When you hear sad music and feel some sadness in response, is that because the music has successfully carried the sadness of the musician to you as the listener? Or is it better to say that the sadness is in you, released by the music but not “carried” by it? In this show (our second with a live audience), we discuss the music theory of the third-century philosopher Ji Kang 嵆康 (223–262 CE), who argued against the “carrier” view of music and for a more complicated and pluralistic account of the emotional contents of music. We also discuss Ji Kang’s interpretation of a famously evocative and mysterious passage in the Zhuangzi, regarding the “piping of Heaven.” To guide us in discussing these issues, we lean heavily on our guest, Meilin Chinn of Santa Clara University, a leading expert on the philosophy of music in China.
Key passages
Passage 1: Argument by analogy to “loving” and “hating”
夫喜、怒、哀、樂、哀、憎、慙、懼，凡此八者，生民所以接物傳情，區別有屬，而不可溢者也。夫味以甘苦為稱，今以甲賢而心愛，以乙愚而情憎，則『愛』、『憎』宜屬我，而『賢』、『愚』宜屬彼也。可以我愛而謂之『愛人』，我憎則謂之『憎人』，所喜則謂之『喜味』，所怒則謂之『怒味』哉？由此言之，則外內殊用，彼我異名。聲音自當以善惡為主，則無關于哀樂；哀樂自當以情感而後發，則無係于聲音。名實俱去，則盡然可見矣。
Now delight and anger, grief and joy, love and hate, and shame and fear—these eight emotions are the means by which living people relate with things and transmit their feelings. However, they are distinguished by category and cannot be confused. Let us take the case of Mr. A, who is a worthy man that I love, and Mr. B, who is a fool that I hate. The love and hate appropriately belong to me; the worthiness and ignorance appropriately belong to them. Can we say this is a ‘love’ person because I love him or a ‘hate’ person because I hate him? Flavors are called sweet or bitter. If I like a certain flavor is it to be called ‘like’? Or if I am angered by a flavor, is it to be called ‘anger’ ? To speak from this perspective, inner and outer are different functions, and self and other have different names. Since music must naturally have being good or bad as the essential thing, it has no relation to grief or joy; and since grief and joy must naturally be such that they are only released after the emotions are moved, they have no connection with music. When name and reality are kept apart, then this can be fully seen.
(Ji Kang 嵆康, “Music Has in It neither Grief nor Joy,” Robert Henricks’s translation, 75-76)
Passage 2: Zhuangzi on the piping of heaven
[子綦曰：]「。。。女聞地籟而未聞天籟夫！」子游曰：「敢問其方。」子綦曰：「夫大塊噫氣，其名為風。是唯无作，作則萬竅怒呺。而獨不聞之翏翏乎？山林之畏佳，大木百圍之竅穴，似鼻，似口，似耳。。。泠風則小和，飄風則大和，厲風濟則眾竅為虛。而獨不見之調調、之刁刁乎？」子游曰：「地籟則眾竅是已，人籟則比竹是已。敢問天籟。」子綦曰：「夫吹萬不同，而使其自已1也，咸其自取，怒者其誰邪！」
[The teacher says to the student:] “…You hear the piping of humankind without yet hearing the piping of earth; you hear the piping of earth without yet hearing the piping of Heaven.”
[The teacher and student describe the piping of Earth and humankind:] “When the Great Clump belches forth its vital breath, we call it the wind. As soon as it begins, raging cries emerge from all the ten thousand hollows ….the piping of the earth just means the sound of these hollows. And the piping of humankind would be the sound of bamboo panpipes.”
[The teacher describes the piping of Heaven:] “It is it the gusting differently through the myriad things causing each to be itself. For since every last identity is only what some one of them picks out from it, what identity can there be for that which rouses it.”
(Zhuangzi 莊子, Chapter Two, “Equalizing Assessments of Things,” translation slightly modified from Brook Ziporyn’s translation, 11-12)
Sources and phrases mentioned
- Meilin Chinn, Philosophy Department, Santa Clara University
- Ji Kang 嵆康 (a.k.a. “Xi Kang” and “Hsi K’ang,” 223–262 CE)
- Xuanxue 玄學 (“Profound Learning,” “Mystery Studies”)
- Kishi Bashi (composer and performer of this outstanding piece, among many others; see also this song film)
- Kimberly Dill, Philosophy Department, Santa Clara University
- Matthew Izor, Philosophy Department, Santa Clara University
- “Music Has in It neither Grief nor Joy” (聲無哀樂論)
- Xunzi 荀子 (3rd century BCE)
- Yueji 樂記 (“The Record of Music,” a chapter of the Confucian text, Liji 禮記, the Rites or Record of Ritual)
- Mengzi (Mencius) 2A2, “By viewing their ceremonies we know their administration. By hearing their music, we know their virtue”
- “Only music cannot be faked” (唯樂不可以為偽, a quote from the Yuexiang 樂象 or “Images of Music” section of the Yueji)
- “The Imperial March” (Darth Vader’s theme music)
- The legend of Boya and Ziqi, two friends who deeply understood one another through skillful understanding of their music
- xiang 象 (“signs,” “images,” representations that have determinate content)
- Zhuangzi 莊子 (a.k.a., Chuang Tzu)
- The theme of “unselfconsciousness” in Daoism
- Paul Ekman on “universal emotions“
- Mencius on the “four sprouts” (pro-virtuous emotional dispositions)
- li 禮 (rituals, rules of propriety)
- John Williams (widely known for composing the sound tracks to the original Star Wars movies…not to be confused with John R. Williams the Zhuangzi scholar!)
- sheng 聲, “musical sounds”
- the guqin 古琴, traditional stringed instrument that Ji Kang played and wrote about
- “Rhapsody on the Qin” (Qinfu 琴賦, Ji Kang’s essay on the guqin)
- “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” Waxahatchee’s interpretation, originally by Dolly Parton
- Shawn Colvin, “Sunny Came Home“
- “Barber’s Adagio for Strings” (example mentioned by Kishi Bashi, best known as the theme music for Platoon)
- David Hume’s sentiment-based aesthetics and ethics
- emotivism and expressivism (two views about the foundations of ethical norms or values)
- Further readings:
- Hsi K’ang, Philosophy and Argumentation in Early China: The Essays of Hsi K’ang (Robert Henricks’s complete translation of the writtings of Ji Kang)
- So Jeong Park, “The Aesthetics of Musical Emotion in Ji Kang’s ‘Music Has in It neither Grief nor Joy‘”
- David Chai, “Musical Naturalism in the Thought of Ji Kang“
- David Chai, “Ji Kang’s ‘On Dispelling Self-Interest‘”
Really enjoyed talking with Meilin and the other philosophers, students, and musician(s) about this remarkable treatise by Ji Kang. I had one point that I wanted to make about Ji Kang’s theory of emotions, but worried that it was just too geeky and obscure for a general discussion.
Ji Kang says that configurations of musical sounds can’t “carry” emotions in part because they don’t carry xiang 象 (“signs,” “symbols,” “images”), which seems to be the term that he uses by stipulation to refer to most any determinate, representational content.
This strongly suggests that he has what people now tend to call a more cognitivist account of the emotions. On more cognitivist accounts, if you want to explain what makes it right to attribute (say) sadness to someone, it’s not enough to point out that they are experiencing certain felt states or physiological states (e.g., a void or sense of emptiness in the heart, a decreased pulse in combination with other bodily phenomena), you must also (or instead) point to some representation of circumstances toward which they have some characteristic attitude. For example, sadness might consist in part in the view that something or someone important has been lost and regarding it as bad. It seems pretty likely that Ji Kang is just assuming that configurations of musical notes can only carry emotions if they also carry xiang 象 because emotions themselves are constituted in part by xiang 象. If the putatively “sad” music slows the pulse and makes one feel a bit empty in the heart, that may have certain causal effects on the listener that make them more likely to feel sad than not, but the sadness isn’t in (or carried by) the music itself. For the sadness to be in the music itself, there must be something relatively well specified that it represents as bad or worthy of sadness.
If that’s right, then, as Meilin suggested at one point, Ji Kang’s analysis suggests that we need a richer vocabulary for emotions and semi-emotional phenomena. Ji Kang seems to allow that there are states that are emotion-like and have characteristic effects on the emotions, but lack xiang 象 and thus don’t qualify as emotions as such.
Philosophers and psychologists nowadays sometimes distinguish between “emotions” in some strict sense that covers things like sadness about some particular circumstance and “moods” which can’t be characterized in terms of representations of any specific circumstance (a general feeling of glumness, a general tendency to interpret events in a negative light). Ji Kang’s position may be that configurations of musical notes can carry certain moods (or something) even though they can’t carry specific emotions.
My hunch is that the more mainstream/Confucian music theorists can accept this part of Ji Kang’s criticism, so long as musical sounds can at least carry moods (or something like moods) and so long as the musician has an yi 意 (emotive thought, inclination) that they aimed to convey through the music. To be sure, Ji Kang anticipates and responds to the objection that musicians often have an intended yi 意 that can be discerned by a skilled listener. But I don’t think he gave the objection its due.