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The Western Classical Canon is a narrative of the history of western musicology and philosophy that elevates certain composers and works to a higher status and given importance due to their supposed larger contribution towards the cultivation and development of Western culture and art.

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Some of the more prominent composers in the canon that may be recognised are:

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Johann Sebastian Bach

Igor Stravinsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Franz Schubert

Johannes Brahms

Dmitri Shostakovich

These are composers who are recognisable in public perception and knowledge of Western classical composers. This prominence in the public conciousness is due to the longevity of their works and popularity. Some of which for the composers in the canon compared to others who are less known is due to the influence of the Classical Canon in the narrative of western music history.

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We will examine the Classical Canon narrative; its philosophy, influence, and content, through the lens of several different composers:

Beethoven

Lizst

Shostakovich

Each of these examples will show an important aspect of the Classical Canon, and showcase the creation and shaping of the narrative on which it is based. From its origins in the 1800's to the stigma it has created today that both contemporary composers, performers and musicologists must tackle.

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The Romantic era (from around 1830-1900) was one characterised by new ideas in art such as individualism, artists intentions, emotion over reason, and the glorification of nature and aesthetic beauty.

Beethoven came at the tale end of the Classical era, and represented a shift into the Romantic ideals. His music was, unlike any composer before, played over and over again, and he was extremely popular as a public figure and known composer.

His composition style reflected this social change, by the end of his career his music was much more emotive, exact, and scrupulous than before, and his aim was secure himself a lasting legacy in the annuals of public consciousness. the works composed in this final stage of his career include some of the most performed and revered of his works.

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Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 1 [Wiener Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan]

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“Whoever has lived through the last twenty years has lived centuries…The era is in flight. Its representative images pass in such quick succession that contemporaries stare and wonder, stand frozen and understand nothing. The fast succession gives them the impression of an endless period of time unfolding before their eyes, all the more so because in their ossified state they do not participate and thus have lost any measure of time itself.

Time is fleeting; the wiser ones have long known it. Unimaginable things have happened; the world has suffered great transformations calmly and mostly, in the gentle passing of days as well as during the hurricanes and volcanoes of revolutions.”

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Romantic philosophy also gave out the idea of the 'Genius' artist, in particular the writings of David Hume, who describe 'geniuses' and 'ignorants' occupying similar positions outside of society. He was an adamant Romantic, declaring that   “Reason is, and ought to only be the slave of the passions”

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1. Life and Works

Born in Edinburgh, Hume spent his childhood at Ninewells, his family's modest estate in the border lowlands. He came from a "good family" (MOL 2)-socially well connected but not wealthy. His father died just after David's second birthday, leaving him and his elder brother and sister in

the care of our Mother, a woman of singular Merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her Children. (MOL 3)

Katherine Falconer Hume realized that David was uncommonly precocious, so when his older brother went up to Edinburgh University, Hume went with him, although he was only 10 or 11. There he studied Latin and Greek, read widely in history and literature, ancient and modern philosophy, and also did some mathematics and natural philosophy-what we now call natural science.

The education David received, both at home and at the university, aimed at training pupils to a life of virtue regulated by stern Scottish Calvinist strictures. Prayers and sermons were prominent aspects of his home and university life. At some point, Hume read The Whole Duty of Man, a widely circulated Anglican devotional tract that details our duties to God, our fellow human beings, and ourselves.

Hume's family thought him suited for a legal career, but he found the law "nauseous", preferring to read classical texts, especially Cicero. He decided to become a "Scholar and Philosopher", and followed a rigorous program of reading and reflection for three years until "there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought" (HL 3.2). The intensity of developing his philosophical vision precipitated a psychological crisis in the isolated scholar.

The crisis eventually passed, and Hume remained intent on articulating his "new Scene of Thought". As a second son, his inheritance was meager, so he moved to France, where he could live cheaply, and finally settled in La Flèche, a sleepy village in Anjou best known for its Jesuit college where Descartes and Mersenne had studied a century before. Here he read French and other continental authors, especially Malebranche, Dubos, and Bayle, and occasionally baited the Jesuits with arguments attacking their beliefs. By this time, Hume had not only rejected the religious beliefs with which he was raised, but was also opposed to organized religion in general, an opposition that remained constant throughout his life. In 1734, when he was only 23, he began writing A Treatise of Human Nature.

Hume returned to England in 1737 to ready the Treatise for the press. To curry favor with Joseph Butler (1692-1752), he "castrated" his manuscript, deleting his controversial discussion of miracles, along with other "nobler parts" (HL 6.2). Book I, "Of the Understanding", and Book II, "Of the Passions", appeared anonymously in 1739. The next year saw the publication of Book III, "Of Morals", as well as his anonymous "Abstract" of Books I and II.

The Treatise was no literary sensation, but it didn't fall "deadborn from the press" (MOL 6), as Hume disappointedly described its reception. Despite his surgical deletions, it attracted enough of "a Murmour among the Zealots" (MOL 6) to fuel his lifelong reputation as an atheist and a sceptic. When he applied for the Chair of Ethics and Pneumatical ("Mental") Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1745, his reputation provoked vocal and ultimately successful opposition. Six years later, he stood for the Chair of Logic at Glasgow, only to be turned down again. Hume never held an academic post.

In 1745, he accepted a position as a young nobleman's tutor, only to discover that his charge was insane. A year later he became secretary to his cousin, Lieutenant General James St Clair, eventually accompanying him on an extended diplomatic mission in Austria and Italy.

In 1748, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding appeared, covering the central ideas of Book I of the Treatise and his discussion of liberty and necessity from Book II. He also included material he had excised from the Treatise. In 1751, he published An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, a "recasting" of Book III of the Treatise, which he described as "incomparably the best" of all his work (MOL 10). More essays, the Political Discourses, appeared in 1752, and Hume's correspondence reveals that a draft of the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion was also underway at this time.

An offer to serve as Librarian to the Edinburgh Faculty of Advocates gave Hume the opportunity to begin another project, a History of England, using the law library's excellent resources. Published in six volumes between 1754 and 1762, his History was a bestseller well into the next century, giving him the financial independence he had long sought. But even as a librarian, Hume's reputation as an atheist and sceptic dogged him. One of his orders for "indecent Books" prompted an unsuccessful move for his dismissal and excommunication from the Kirk. Friends and publishers persuaded him to suppress some of his more controversial writings on religion during his lifetime.

In 1763, Hume accepted a position as private secretary to the British Ambassador to France. During his three-year stay in Paris, he became Secretary to the Embassy, and eventually its chargé d'affaires. He became the rage of the Parisian salons, enjoying the conversation and company of famous European intellectuals. He was known for his love of good food and wine, as well as his enjoyment of the attentions and affections of women.

In 1775, Hume was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. Before his death in 1776, he arranged for the posthumous publication of his most controversial work, the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and composed a brief autobiography, "My Own Life". Although there was much curiosity about how "the great infidel" would face his death, his friends agreed that he prepared himself with the same peaceful cheer that characterized his life.

2. The relation between the Treatise and the Enquiries

3. Philosophical Project

As the title of the Treatise proclaims, Hume's subject is human nature. He summarizes his project in its subtitle: "an attempt to introduce the experimental method into moral subjects". In his day, "moral" meant anything concerned with human nature, not just ethics, as he makes clear at the beginning of the first Enquiry, where he defines "moral philosophy" as "the science of human nature" (EHU 1.1/5). Hume's aim is to bring the scientific method to bear on the study of human nature.

Hume's early studies of philosophical "systems" convinced him that philosophy was in a sorry state and in dire need of reform. When he was only 18 years old, he complained in a letter that anyone familiar with philosophy realizes that it is embroiled in "endless Disputes" (HL 3.2). The ancient philosophers, on whom he had been concentrating, replicated the errors their natural philosophers made. They advanced theories that were "entirely Hypothetical", depending "more upon Invention than Experience". He objects that they consulted their imagination in constructing their views about virtue and happiness, "without regarding human Nature, upon which every moral Conclusion must depend". The youthful Hume resolved to avoid these mistakes in his own work, by making human nature his "principal Study, & the Source from which I would derive every Truth" (HL 3.6).

Even at this early stage, the roots of Hume's mature approach to the reform of philosophy are evident. He was convinced that the only way to improve philosophy was to make the investigation of human nature central-and empirical (HL 3.2). The problem with ancient philosophy was its reliance on "hypotheses"-claims based on speculation and invention rather than experience and observation.

By the time Hume began to write the Treatise three years later, he had immersed himself in the works of the modern philosophers, but found them disturbing, not least because they made the same mistakes the ancients did, while professing to avoid them. Why, Hume asks, haven't philosophers been able to make the spectacular progress in understanding human nature that natural philosophers-whom we now call "scientists"-have recently achieved in the physical sciences? His answer is that while scientists have cured themselves of their "passion for hypotheses and systems", philosophers haven't yet purged themselves of this temptation. Their theories were too speculative, relied on a priori assumptions, and paid too little attention to what human nature is actually like. Instead of helping us understand ourselves, modern philosophers were mired in interminable disputes-evident even to "the rabble without doors"-giving rise to "the common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds", that is, "every kind of argument which is in any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended" (T xiv.3).

To make progress, Hume maintains, we need to "reject every system ... however subtle or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation". These systems, covering a wide range of entrenched and influential metaphysical and theological views, purport to have discovered principles that give us a deeper and more certain knowledge of ultimate reality. But Hume argues that in attempting to go beyond anything we can possibly experience, these metaphysical theories try to "penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding" (EHU 1.11/11), which makes their claims to have found the "ultimate principles" of human nature not just false, but unintelligible. These "airy sciences", as Hume calls them, have only the "air" of science (EHU 1.12/12).

Worse still, these metaphysical systems are smokescreens for "popular superstitions" that attempt to overwhelm us with religious fears and prejudices (EHU 1.11/11). Hume has in mind a variety of doctrines that need metaphysical cover to look respectable-arguments for the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of God's particular providence. Metaphysics aids and abets these and other superstitious doctrines.

But he insists that because these metaphysical and theological systems are objectionable, it doesn't mean we should give up doing philosophy. Instead, we need to appreciate "the necessity of carrying the war into the most secret recesses of the enemy". The only way to resist the allure of these pseudo-sciences is to engage with them, countering their "abstruse ... metaphysical jargon" with "accurate and just reasoning" (EHU 1.12/12).

This means that the initial phase of Hume's project must be critical. A prominent part of this aspect of his project is to "discover the proper province of human reason"-determining the extent and limits of reason's powers and capacities (EHU 1.12/12). He believes that his investigation will show that metaphysics as the quest for understanding the ultimate nature of reality is beyond reason's scope.

Scholars once emphasized this critical phase at the expense of the rest of Hume's project, encouraging the charge that he was just a negative skeptic, who rejects the views of others without defending any positive position himself. But while he is indeed skeptical about the possibility of metaphysical insights that go deeper than science can, investigating the proper province of reason isn't only a critical activity. His critique of metaphysics clears the way for the constructive phase of his project-the development of an empirical science of human nature-and Hume is not at all skeptical about its prospects.

In his "Introduction" to the Treatise, Hume launches the constructive phase of his project by proposing nothing less than "a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation entirely new" (T xvi.6). The new foundation is the scientific study of human nature. He argues that all the sciences have some relation to human nature, "even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion" (T xv.4). They are all human activities, so what we are able to accomplish in them depends on understanding what kinds of questions we are able to handle and what sorts we must leave alone. If we have a better grasp of the scope and limits of our understanding, the nature of our ideas, and the operations we perform in reasoning about them, there is no telling what improvements we might make in these sciences.

We should expect even more improvement in the sciences that are more closely connected to the study of human nature: " Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics ". Many longstanding philosophical debates are about the nature of our ideas-causation, liberty, virtue and beauty-so getting clear about their content should help us cut through these "endless disputes".

As the science of human nature is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, "the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation" (T xvi.7). Although Hume does not mention him by name, Newton (1642-1727) is his hero. He accepts the Newtonian maxim " Hypotheses non fingo ", roughly, "I do not do hypotheses". Any laws we discover must be established by observation and experiment.

Hume, however, wants to go much further. He wants to explain how the mind works by discovering its "secret springs and principles". He reminds us that astronomers, for a long time, were content with proving the "motions, order, and magnitude of the heavenly bodies". But then "a philosopher"-Newton-went beyond them and determined "the laws and forces, by which the revolutions of the planets are governed and directed" (EHU 1.15/14). Newton's example led other natural philosophers to similar explanatory successes. Hume believes he will be equally successful in finding the fundamental laws governing our "mental powers and economy", if he follows the same caution Newton exhibited in carrying out his inquiries.

Newton's scientific method provides Hume with a template for introducing the experimental method into his investigation of the mind. In An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, he says he will follow "a very simple method" that he believes will bring about a transformation in the study of human nature. Following Newton's example, he argues that we should "reject every system ... however subtile or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation", and accept only arguments derived from experience. When we inquire about human nature, since we are asking "a question of fact, not of abstract science", we must rely on experience and observation (EPM 1.10/173-174).

As the fledgling Newton of the moral sciences, Hume wants to find a set of laws that explain how the mind's contents- perceptions, as he calls them-come and go in the mind and how simple perceptions combine to form complex perceptions in ways that explain human thought, belief, feeling and action.

Newton's achievement was that he was able to explain diverse and complex physical phenomena in terms of a few general principles. Like him, Hume proposes to explain "all effects from the simplest and fewest causes" (T xvii.8). He predicts that it is likely that one "principle of the mind depends on another" and that this principle may in turn be brought under another principle even "more general and universal" (EHU 1.15/15). But he emphasizes that while he will try to find the most general principles, rendering them as universal as possible, all of his explanations must be based completely on experience.

Although philosophy, as an empirical enterprise, is itself bound by experience, this is not a defect in the science of human nature. The same is true for all the sciences: "None of them can go beyond experience, or establish any principles which are not founded on that authority" (T Intro 10). Explanations must come to an end somewhere. When we see that we have "arriv'd at the utmost extent of human reason, we sit down contented", for the only reason we can give for our most general principles is "our experience of their reality" (T 9).

Hume is Newtonian in much more than method. He sees that Newton is significantly different from John Locke (1632-1704) and the other Royal Society natural philosophers, because he rejects their mechanist picture of the world. Newton's greatest discovery, the Law of Gravitation, is not a mechanical law. Hume explicitly models his account of the fundamental principles of the mind's operations-the principles of association-on the idea of gravitational attraction. By appealing to these same principles throughout, Hume gives an explanation of these diverse phenomena that enable him to provide a unified and economical account of the mind.

4. Account of the Mind

To explain the workings of our minds with the economy Newton displayed in his physics, Hume introduces the minimal amount of machinery he thinks is necessary to account for the mind's operations. Each piece is warranted by experience.

Impressions include sensations as well as desires, passions, and emotions. Ideas are "the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning" (T 1.1.1.1/1). He thinks everyone will recognize his distinction, since everyone is aware of the difference between feeling and thinking. It is the difference between feeling the pain of your present sunburn and recalling last year's sunburn.

Perceptions-both impressions and ideas-may be either simple or complex. Complex impressions are made up of a group of simple impressions. My impression of the violet I just picked is complex. Among the ways it affects my senses are its brilliant purple color and its sweet smell. I can separate and distinguish its color and smell from the rest of my impressions of the violet. Its color and smell are simple impressions, which can't be broken down further because they have no component parts.

When Hume distinguishes impressions and ideas in terms of their relative force and vivacity, he is pointing out something that is generally true of them as a matter of fact. On occasion, in dreams or a high fever, ideas may approach the force and vivacity of impressions, but these are exceptions that prove the-empirical-rule. In general, impressions and ideas are so different that no one can deny the distinction.

Although nothing seems freer than the power of thought, which isn't "restrained within the limits of nature and reality" (EHU 2.4/18), Hume insists that our imagination is in fact "confined within very narrow limits". We can separate and combine our ideas in new and even bizarre ways, imagining creatures we've never seen or faraway galaxies, but all the materials of thinking are ultimately derived from our impressions. Since "all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones"; we are restricted to "compounding, transporting, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience" (EHU 2.5/19).

4.1 The Copy Principle

All our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent. (T 1.1.1.7/4)

He presents the principle as something that everyone's experience confirms, but he also gives an argument to establish it.

He argues first that there is a one-to-one correspondence between simple ideas and simple impressions. He can't prove that this correspondence holds universally, since he can't examine every individual impression and idea. But he is so confident the correspondence holds that he challenges anyone who doubts it to produce an example of a simple impression without a corresponding simple idea, or a simple idea without a corresponding simple impression. Since he is certain they will fail, he concludes that there is a constant conjunction between simple impressions and simple ideas.

Next, he maintains that this constant conjunction is so universal that the correspondence can't be a matter of chance. There must be a causal connection between them, but do ideas cause impressions or do impressions cause ideas?

Finally, he argues that experience tells us that simple impressions always precede and thus cause their corresponding ideas. To support this claim, he appeals to two sorts of cases. First, if you want to give a child an idea of the taste of pineapple, you give her a piece of pineapple to eat. When you do, you are giving her an impression of the pineapple's taste. You never go the other way round. His other case involves a person born blind, who won't have ideas of color because he won't have impressions of color.

The Copy Principle is an empirical thesis, which he emphasizes by offering "one contradictory phenomenon" as an empirical counterexample to the principle. He imagines someone who has had the same sorts of experiences of colors most of us have had, but has never experienced a certain shade of blue. Hume thinks that if he orders all the shades of blue he has experienced from the darkest to the lightest, he will see immediately that there is a gap where the missing shade should be. Then he asks

Whether 'tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to ... raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, tho' it had never been convey'd to him by his senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always deriv'd from the correspondent impressions; tho' the instance is so particular and singular, that 'tis scarce worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we shou'd alter our general maxim. (T 1.1.1.10/6)

Hume repeats the case of the missing shade almost verbatim in the first Enquiry. While scholars have wondered exactly how the person might supply the missing shade, he seems unconcerned with the details. For Hume, once again the exception proves the-empirical-rule.

4.2 Hume's Account of Definition

Although Hume's distinctive brand of empiricism is often identified with his commitment to the Copy Principle, his use of the principle's reverse in his account of definition is perhaps the more innovative element of his system.

As his diagnosis of traditional metaphysics reveals, Hume believes that

the chief obstacle ... to our improvement in the moral or metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of the ideas, and ambiguity of the terms. (EHU 7.1.2/61)

Conventional definitions-replacing terms with their synonyms-merely replicate philosophical confusions and never break out of a narrow definitional circle. Getting clear about the content of the ideas and the meanings of the terms we are investigating requires something else.

Hume argues that we must "pass from words to the true and real subject of the controversy"-ideas. He believes he has found a way to accurately determine their content-his account of definition. He touts it as "a new microscope or species of optics", predicting that it will produce equally dramatic results in the moral sciences as its hardware counterparts-telescopes and microscopes-have produced in natural philosophy (EHU 7.1.4/62).

Hume's account of definition uses a simple series of tests to determine cognitive content. Begin with a term. Ask what idea is annexed to it. If there is no such idea, then the term has no cognitive content, however prominently it figures in philosophy or theology. If there is an idea annexed to the term, and it is complex, break it down into the simple ideas that compose it, and trace them back to their original impressions. If the process fails at any point, the idea in question lacks cognitive content. When carried through successfully, however, it yields a "just definition"-a precise account of the troublesome idea's content.

Hume uses his account of definition in the critical phaseof his project to show that many of the central concepts of traditional metaphysics lack intelligible content. He also uses it in the constructive phase to determine the exact meaning of our terms and ideas.

4.3 Principles of Association

Although we are capable of separating and combining our simple ideas as we please, there is, nevertheless, a regular order to our thoughts. If ideas occurred to us completely randomly, so that all our thoughts were "loose and unconnected", we wouldn't be able to think coherently (T 1.1.4.1/10). This suggests that

There is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes the mind to conjoin them more frequently, and makes the one, upon its appearance, introduce the other. (Abstract 35)

Hume explains this "tie or union" in terms of the mind's natural ability to associate certain ideas. Association is not "an inseparable connexion", but rather "a gentle force, which commonly prevails", by means of which one idea naturally introduces another (T 1.1.4.1/10).

In the first Enquiry, Hume says that even though it is obvious to everyone that our ideas are connected in this way, he is the first philosopher who has "attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association" (EHU 3.2/24). He regards his use of these "universal principles" as so distinctive that he advertises them as his most original contribution-one that entitles him call himself an " inventor " (Abstract 35).

Like gravitational attraction, the associative principles are original, and so can't be explained further. Although the associative principles' "effects are everywhere conspicuous" their causes "are mostly unknown, and must be resolv'd into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain". Accordingly, we should curb any "intemperate desire" to account further for them, for doing so would take us illegitimately beyond the bounds of experience (T 1.1.4.6/12-13).

In the Abstract, Hume concludes that it should be "easy to conceive of what vast consequences these principles must be in the science of human nature". Since they "are the only ties of our thoughts, they are really to us the cement of the universe, and all the operations of the mind must, in great measure, depend on them" (Abstract 35). Just what these "vast consequences" are will become clear when we examine Hume's revolutionary accounts of our causal inferences and moral judgments.

5. Causation

Modern philosophers thought of themselves as scientific revolutionaries because they rejected Aristotle's account of causation. Even so, they accepted his distinction between knowledge and belief, and regarded causal inference as an exercise of reason, which aimed at demonstrating the necessary connection between cause and effect. Malebranche (1638-1715), and others following Descartes (1596-1650), were optimistic about the possibility of demonstrative scientific knowledge, while those in the British experimental tradition were more pessimistic. Locke was sufficiently sceptical about what knowledge we can attain that he constructed one of the first accounts of probable inference to show that belief can meet standards of rationality that make experimental natural philosophy intellectually respectable.

When Hume enters the debate, he translates the traditional distinction between knowledge and belief into his own terms, dividing "all the objects of human reason or enquiry" into two exclusive and exhaustive categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact.

In sharp contrast, the truth of propositions concerning matters of fact depends on the way the world is. Their contraries are always possible, their denials never imply contradictions, and they can't be established by demonstration. Asserting that Miami is north of Boston is false, but not contradictory. We can understand what someone who asserts this is saying, even if we are puzzled about how he could have the facts so wrong.

The distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact is often called "Hume's Fork", generally with the negative implication that Hume may be illicitly ruling out meaningful propositions that don't fit into these two categories or fit into both of them. To defuse this objection, however, it is important to bear in mind that Hume's categories are his translations of a traditional absolute categorical classificatory distinction, which all his contemporaries and immediate predecessors accepted.

Hume's method dictates his strategy in the causation debate. In the critical phase, he argues that his predecessors were wrong: our causal inferences aren't determined by "reason or any other operation of the understanding" (EHU 5.1.2/41). In the constructive phase, he supplies an alternative: the associative principles are their basis.

5.1 Causal Inference: Critical Phase

Causal inferences are the only way we can go beyond the evidence of our senses and memories. In making them, we suppose there is some connection between present facts and what we infer from them. But what is this connection? How is it established?

If the connection is established by an operation of reason or the understanding, it must concern either relations of ideas or matters of fact.

Hume argues that the connection can't involve relations of ideas. Effects are different events from their causes, so there is no contradiction in conceiving of a cause occurring, and its usual effect not occurring. Ordinary causal judgments are so familiar that we tend to overlook this; they seem immediate and intuitive. But suppose you were suddenly brought into the world as an adult, armed with the intellectual firepower of an Einstein. Could you, simply by examining an aspirin tablet, determine that it will relieve your headache?

Hume now moves to the only remaining possibility. If causal inferences don't involve a priori reasoning about relations of ideas, they must concern matters of fact and experience. When we've had many experiences of one kind of event constantly conjoined with another, we begin to think of them as cause and effect and infer the one from the other. But even after we've had many experiences of a cause conjoined with its effect, our inferences aren't determined by reason or any other operation of the understanding.

In the past, taking aspirin has relieved my headaches, so I believe that taking aspirin will relieve the headache I'm having now. But my inference is based on the aspirin's superficial sensible qualities, which have nothing to do with headache relief. Even if I assume that the aspirin has "secret powers" that are doing the heavy lifting in relieving my headache, they can't be the basis of my inference, since these "secret powers" are unknown.

Nonetheless, Hume observes, "we always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those we have experienced, will follow from them" (EHU 4.2.16/33). Since we neither intuit nor infer a priori that similar objects have similar secret powers, our presumption must be based in some way on our experience.

Hume thinks we can get a handle on this question by considering two clearly different propositions:

(1)

I've found that headache relief has always followed my taking aspirin;

and

(2)

Taking aspirin similar to the ones I've taken in the past will relieve my present headache.

There is no question that "the one proposition may be justly inferred from the other", and that "it is always inferred". But since their connection obviously isn't intuitive, Hume challenges us to produce the "chain of reasoning" that takes us from propositions like (1) to propositions like (2) (EHU 4.2.16/34).

Hume thinks it is evident that demonstrative reasoning can't bridge the gap between (1) and (2). However unlikely it may be, we can always intelligibly conceive of a change in the course of nature. Even though aspirin relieved my previous headaches, there's no contradiction in supposing that it won't relieve the one I'm having now, so the supposition of a change in the course of nature can't be proven false by any reasoning concerning relations of ideas.

That leaves probable reasoning. Hume argues that there is no probable reasoning that can provide a just inference from past to future. Any attempt to infer (2) from (1) by a probable inference will be viciously circular-it will involve supposing what we are trying to prove.

At this point, Hume has exhausted the ways reason might establish a connection between cause and effect. He assures us that he offers his "sceptical doubts" not as a "discouragement, but rather an incitement ... to attempt something more full and satisfactory". Having cleared the way for his constructive account, Hume is ready to do just that.

5.2 Causal Inference: Constructive Phase

Hume calls his constructive account of causal inference a "sceptical solution" to the "sceptical doubts" he raised in the critical phase of his argument.

whenever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation ... we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. (EHU 5.1.5/43)

Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire. Causation is the operative associative principle here, since it is the only one of those principles that can take us beyond our senses and memories.

Hume concludes that custom alone "makes us expect for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past" (EHU 5.1.6/44). Custom thus turns out to be the source of the Uniformity Principle -the belief that the future will be like the past.

5.3 Belief

It can't be that beliefs have some additional idea-the idea of belief, perhaps-that conceptions lack. If there were some such idea, given our ability to freely combine ideas, we could, by simply willing, add that idea to any conception whatsoever, and believe anything we like.

Hume concludes that belief must be some sentiment or feeling aroused in us independently of our wills, which accompanies those ideas that constitute them. It is a particular way or manner of conceiving an idea that is generated by the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

If constant conjunctions were all that is involved, my thoughts about aspirin and headaches would only be hypothetical. For belief, one of the conjoined objects must be present to my senses or memories; I must be taking, or just have taken, an aspirin. In these circumstances, believing that my headache will soon be relieved is as unavoidable as feeling affection for a close friend, or anger when someone harms us. "All these operations are species of natural instincts, which no reasoning ... is able either to produce or prevent" (EHU 5.1.8/46-47).

While Hume thinks that defining this sentiment may be impossible, we can describe belief, if only by analogy, although he was never completely satisfied with his attempts to do so. Belief is a livelier, firmer, more vivid, steady, and intense conception of an object. Hume intends these characterizations to go beyond merely recording intensity of feeling to capture how belief

renders realities ... more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination. (EHU 5.2.12/49)

But how does an idea come to be conceived in such a manner that it constitutes a belief?

Hume's explanation is that as I become accustomed to aspirin's relieving my headaches, I develop a propensity-a tendency-to expect headache relief to follow taking aspirin. The propensity is due to the associative bond that my repeated experiences of taking aspirin and headache relief have formed. My present impressions of taking an aspirin are as forceful and vivid as anything could be, and some of their force and vivacity transfers across the associative path to the idea of headache relief, enlivening it with enough force and vivacity to give it the "strength and solidity" that constitutes belief.

Since I don't know how aspirin relieves headaches, it is fortunate that there is "a kind of pre-established harmony between the course of nature and the succession of our ideas" that teaches me to take aspirin when I have a headache. Custom, Hume maintains, in language that anticipates and influenced Darwin,

is that principle by which this correspondence has been effected; so necessary to the subsistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct, in every circumstance of human life. (EHU 5.2.21/55)

It is far better, Hume concludes, to rely on "the ordinary wisdom of nature", which ensures that we form beliefs "by some instinct or mechanical tendency", rather than trusting it to "the fallacious deductions of our reason" (EHU 5.2.22/55).

In keeping with his project of providing a naturalistic account of how our minds work, Hume has given empirical explanations of our propensity to make causal inferences, and the way those inferences lead to belief.

6. The Idea of Necessary Connection

The early modern causation debate revolved around a family of "nearly synonymous" key ideas, the most prominent of which were the ideas of power and necessary connection. For Hume, "there are no ideas, which occur in metaphysics, more obscure and uncertain". He showcases the critical and constructive uses of his account of definition as he attempts "to fix ... the precise meaning of these terms", in order to "remove some part of that obscurity, which is so much complained of in this species of philosophy" (EHU 7.1.3/61-62).

6.1 Necessary Connection: Critical Phase

Attending to internal impressions of the operations of our minds doesn't help. Although voluntary bodily movements follow our willing that those movements occur, this is a matter of fact I learn through experience, not from some internal impression of my will's power. When I decide to type, my fingers move over the keyboard. When I decide to stop, they stop, but I have no idea how this happens. Were I aware of the power of my will to move my fingers, I'd know both how it worked and its limits.

Our ability to control our thoughts doesn't give us an impression of power, either. We don't have a clue about how we call up our ideas. Our command over them is limited and varies from time to time. We learn about these limitations and variations only through experience, but the mechanisms by which they operate are unknown and incomprehensible to us. If I decide to think about Istanbul, my idea of that city comes to mind, but I experience only the succession of my decision followed by the idea's appearance, never the power itself.

When ordinary people can't determine an event's cause, they attribute it to some "invisible intelligent principle". Malebranche and other occasionalists do the same, except they apply it across the board. True causes aren't powers in the physical world or in human minds. The only true cause is God's willing that certain objects should always be conjoined with certain others.

Anyone aware of our minds' narrow limits should realize that Malebranche's theory takes us into "fairyland"-it goes so far beyond our experience that we have no way of intelligibly assessing it. It also capitalizes on how little we know about the interactions of bodies, but since our idea of God is based on extrapolations from our faculties, our ignorance should also apply to him.

6.2 Necessary Connection: Constructive Phase

Hume concludes that it is just this felt determination of the mind-our awareness of this customary transition from one associated object to another-that is the source of our idea of necessary connection. When we say that one object is necessarily connected with another, we really mean that the objects have acquired an associative connection in our thought that gives rise to this inference.

Having located the missing ingredient, Hume is ready to offer a definition of cause. In fact, he gives us two. The first,

A cause is an object, followed by another, where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second,

gives the relevant external impressions, while the second,

A cause is an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to the other,

captures the internal impression-our awareness of being determined by custom to move from cause to effect. Both are definitions on Hume's account, but his "just definition" of our idea of cause is the conjunction of the two (EHU 7.2.29/76-77). Only together do they capture all the relevant impressions involved.

Hume locates the source of the idea of necessary connection in us, not in the objects themselves or even in our ideas of those objects we regard as causes and effects. In doing so, he completely changes the course of the causation debate, reversing what everyone else thought about the idea of necessary connection. Subsequent discussions of causation must confront the challenges Hume poses for traditional, more metaphysical, ways of looking at our idea of causation.

Hume's treatment of our idea of causation is his flagship illustration of how his method works and the revolutionary results it can achieve. He goes on to apply both his method, and its concrete results, to other prominent debates in the modern period, including probable inference, testimony for miracles, free will, and intelligent design.

7. Moral Philosophy

Hume's explanation of morality is an important part of his efforts to reform philosophy. He takes his primary task to be an investigation into the origin of the basic moral ideas, which he assumes are the ideas of moral goodness and badness. As with the idea of cause and necessary connection, he wants to explain moral ideas as economically as possible in terms of their "simplest and fewest causes". Determining their causes will determine what their content is-what we mean by them. His secondary concern is to establish what character traits and motives are morally good and bad.

Hume follows his sentimentalist predecessor, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), in building his moral theory around the idea of a spectator who approves or disapproves of people's character traits and motives. The sentiments of approval and disapproval are the source of our moral ideas of goodness and badness. To evaluate a character trait as morally good is to evaluate it as virtuous; to evaluate it as morally bad is to evaluate it as vicious.

As he did in the causation debate, Hume steps into an ongoing debate about ethics, often called the British Moralists debate, which began in the mid-seventeenth century and continued until the end of the eighteenth. He uses the same method here as he did in the causation debate: there is a critical phase in which he argues against his opponents, and a constructive phase in which he develops his version of sentimentalism. Hume has two sets of opponents: the self-love theorists and the moral rationalists. He became the most famous proponent of sentimentalism.

Thomas Hobbes' (1588-1679) radical attempt to derive moral and political obligation from motives of self-interest initiated the British Moralists debate. Hobbes, as his contemporaries understood him, characterizes us as naturally self-centered and power-hungry, concerned above all with our own preservation. In the state of nature, a pre-moral and pre-legal condition, we seek to preserve ourselves by trying to dominate others. Since we are all sufficiently "equal" in power, this results in a state of "war of all against all" in which life is "nasty, brutish, and short" ( Leviathan, Ch. 13). The way out is to make a compact with one another. We agree to hand over our power and freedom to a sovereign, who makes the laws necessary for us to live together peacefully and has the power to enforce them. While acting morally requires that we comply with the laws the sovereign establishes, the basis of morality is self-interest.

Bernard Mandeville's (1670-1733) The Fable of the Bees served to reinforce this reading of Hobbes during the early 18 th century. According to Mandeville, human beings are naturally selfish, headstrong, and unruly. Some clever politicians, recognizing that we would be better off living together in a civilized society, took up the task of domesticating us. Realizing that we are proud creatures, highly susceptible to flattery, they were able to dupe many of us to live up to the ideal of virtue-conquering our selfish passions and helping others-by dispensing praise and blame. Moral concepts are just tools clever politicians used to tame us.

Two kinds of moral theories developed in reaction first to Hobbes and then to Mandeville-rationalism and sentimentalism. The rationalists oppose Hobbes' claim that there is no right or wrong in the state of nature, that rightness or wrongness is determined by the sovereign's will, and that morality requires sanctions to motivate us. The sentimentalists object to Hobbes' and Mandeville's "selfish" conceptions of human nature and morality. By the mid-eighteenth century, rationalists and sentimentalists were arguing not only against Hobbes and Mandeville, but also with each other.

7.1 Moral Rationalism: Critical Phase in the Treatise

Hume thinks that "systems and hypotheses" have also "perverted our natural understanding" of morality. The views of the moral rationalists-Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), Locke and William Wollaston (1660-1724)-are prominent among them. One distinctive, but unhealthy, aspect of modern moral philosophy, Hume believes, is that it allies itself with religion and thus sees itself as serving the interests of "popular superstition". Clarke's theory and those of the other rationalists epitomize this tendency.

Clarke, Hume's central rationalist opponent, appeals to reason to explain almost every aspect of morality. He believes that there are demonstrable moral relations of fitness and unfitness that we discover a priori by means of reason alone. Gratitude, for example, is a fitting or suitable response to kindness, while ingratitude is an unfitting or unsuitable response. He believes that the rational intuition that an action is fitting has the power both to obligate us and to move us. To act morally is to act rationally.

Hume's most famous and most important objection to moral rationalism is two-pronged. In Treatise 2.3.3, "Of the influencing motives of the will", he rejects the rationalist ideal of the good person as someone whose passions and actions are governed by reason. In T 3.1.1, he uses these arguments to show that moral ideas do not spring from reason alone.

In the first prong of his objection, Hume begins by remarking that nothing is more common than for philosophers, as well as ordinary people, to talk about the "combat" between reason and passion. They say we ought to be governed by reason rather than passion, and if our passions are not in line with reason's commands, we ought to restrain them or bring them into conformity with reason. Hume counters that "reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will" and that by itself it can never oppose a passion in the direction of the will.

His first argument rests on his empiricist conception of reason. As we saw in his account of causation, demonstrative reasoning consists in comparing ideas to find relations among them, while probable reasoning concerns matters of fact. He considers mathematical reasoning from the relation of ideas category and causal reasoning from the category of matters of fact. He asks us to look at instances of actions where these two types of reasoning are relevant and says that when we do, we will see that reason alone couldn't have moved us.

No one thinks that mathematical reasoning by itself is capable of moving us. Suppose you want to stay out of debt. This may move you to calculate how much money comes in and how much goes out, but mathematical reasoning by itself does not move us to do anything. Mathematical reasoning, when it bears on action, is always used in connection with achieving some purpose and thus in connection with causal reasoning.

Hume, however, argues that when causal reasoning figures in the production of action, it always presupposes an existing desire or want. On his view, reasoning is a process that moves you from one idea to another. If reasoning is to have motivational force, one of the ideas must be tied to some desire or affection. As he says,

It can never in the least concern us to know, that such objects are causes, and such others effects, if both the causes and effects are indifferent to us. Where the objects themselves do not affect us, their connexion can never give them any influence; and 'tis plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connexion, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us (T 2.3.3.3/414).

Noticing a causal connection between exercise and losing weight will not move you to exercise, unless you want to lose weight.

It immediately follows that reason alone cannot oppose a passion in the direction of the will. To oppose a passion, reason must be able to give rise to a motive by itself, since only a motive can oppose another motive, but he has just shown that reason by itself is unable to do this.

Having exposed reason's pretensions to rule, Hume inverts the rationalist's ideal of the good person, and concludes that "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them" (T 2.3.3.4/415).

The second prong of Hume's objection, the argument from motivation, is directed primarily against Clarke and concerns the source of our moral concepts: either they spring from reason or from sentiment. Couching this debate in terms of his own version of the theory of ideas, he reminds us that to engage in any sort of mental activity is to have a perception before the mind, so "to approve of one character, to condemn another, are only so many different perceptions" (T 3.1.1.2/456). Since there are only two types of perception-ideas and impressions-the question between rationalism and sentimentalism is

Whether 'tis by means of our ideas or impressions we distinguish betwixt vice and virtue, and pronounce an action blameable or praise-worthy? (T 3.1.1.3/456)

The argument from motivation has only two premises. The first is that moral ideas have pervasive practical effects. Experience shows that we are often motivated to perform an action because we think it is obligatory or to refrain because we think it is unjust. We try to cultivate the virtues in ourselves and are proud when we succeed and ashamed when we fail. If morality did not have these effects on our passions and actions, moral rules and precepts would be pointless, as would our efforts to be virtuous. Thus "morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions" (T 3.1.1.6/457).

The second premise is that by itself reason is incapable of exciting passions or producing and preventing actions, which Hume supports with the arguments we just looked at about the influencing motives of the will. The argument from motivation, then, is that if moral concepts are capable of exciting passions and producing or preventing actions, but reason alone is incapable of doing these things, then moral concepts can't spring from reason alone.

Reason for Hume is essentially passive and inert: it is incapable by itself of giving rise to new motives or new ideas. Although he thinks the argument from motivation is decisive, in T 3.1.1 he offers a battery of additional arguments, which are intended to show that moral concepts do not arise from reason alone.

Hume takes the defeat of rationalism to entail that moral concepts spring from sentiment. Of course, he was not the first to claim that moral ideas arise from sentiment. Hutcheson claimed that we possess, in addition to our external senses, a special moral sense that disposes us to respond to benevolence with the distinctive feelings of approbation. Hume, however, rejects the idea that the moral sentiments arise from a sense that is an " original quality" and part of our " primary constitution".

He first argues that there are many different types of virtue, not all of which are types of benevolence-respecting people's property rights, keeping promises, courageousness, and industriousness-as Hutcheson maintained. If we agree with Hume, but keep Hutcheson's idea of a moral sense, we would have to believe that we have many different "original" senses, which dispose us to approve of the variety of different virtues separately. But he complains that this is not only highly implausible, but also contrary to the

usual maxims, by which nature is conducted, where a few principles produce all the variety we observe in the universe. (T 3.1.2.6/473)

Instead of multiplying senses, we should look for a few general principles to explain our approval of the different virtues.

The real problem, however, is that Hutcheson just claims-hypothesizes-that we possess a unique, original moral sense. If asked why we have a moral sense, his reply is that God implanted it in us. Although in his critical phase Hume freely borrows many of Hutcheson's arguments to criticize moral rationalism, his rejection of a God-given moral sense puts him on a radically different path from Hutcheson in his constructive phase. One way of understanding Hume's project is to see it as an attempt to naturalize Hutcheson's moral sense theory. He aims to provide a wholly naturalistic and economical explanation of how we come to experience the moral sentiments that also explains why we approve of the different virtues. In the course of explaining the moral sentiments, Hutcheson's idea of an original moral sense disappears from Hume's account of morality.

7.2 Sentimentalism: Constructive Phase

In Treatise 3.3.1, Hume turns to his constructive task of providing a naturalistic explanation of the moral sentiments. He refers to them as feelings of approval or disapproval, praise or blame, esteem or contempt. Approval is a kind of pleasant or agreeable feeling; disapproval a kind of painful or disagreeable feeling. In several key passages, he describes the moral sentiments as calm forms of love and hatred. When we evaluate our own character traits, pride and humility replace love and hatred.

Hume's project is "to discover the true origin of morals, and of that love or hatred, which arises" (T 3.3.1/575) when we contemplate our own or other people's character traits and motives. He traces the moral sentiments to sympathy. Sympathy is a psychological mechanism that explains how we come to feel what others are feeling. It is not itself a feeling or sentiment and so should not be confused with feelings of compassion or pity. Hume appeals to sympathy to explain a wide range of phenomena: our interest in history and current affairs, our ability to enjoy literature, movies, and novels, as well as our sociability. It is central to his explanations of our passions, our sense of beauty, and our sense of what is morally good and bad.

Suppose my friend recently suffered a devastating loss and I realize she is feeling sad. The associative principles transmit force and vivacity from my vivid awareness of myself to my idea of my friend's sadness. Since for Hume the difference between impressions and ideas is that impressions are more lively and vivacious than ideas, if an idea of a passion is sufficiently enlivened, it becomes the very passion itself. I now feel sad too, but not quite as strongly as my friend.

The way Hume uses the idea that the associative principles transmit force and vivacity in his explanation of sympathy is parallel to the way he uses it in his explanation of causal inference. In the case of causal inference, if we have an impression of an effect (smoke), the associative principles give rise not only to the idea of its cause (fire), but they also transmit some of the impression's force and vivacity to the idea of its cause, so that we come to believe that fire is the cause of the smoke. A belief is an idea that is so lively that it is like an impression, and influences us in the way impressions do. Similarly, my lively awareness of myself enlivens by association my idea of my friend's sadness. But the result in the case of sympathy is even stronger: when an idea of a passion is sufficiently enlivened, it becomes the very passion itself.

One advantage Hume's explanation of the moral sentiments in terms of sympathy has over Hutcheson's claim that we possess a God-given moral sense is that it enables him to provide a unified theory of the mind. He explains the moral sentiments by appealing to sympathy, which, in turn, he explains in terms of the same associative principles he invoked to explain causal beliefs. Without sympathy, and the associative principles that explain it, we would be unimaginably different than we are-creatures without causal or moral ideas.

Hume develops his account of moral evaluation further in response to two objections to his claim that the moral sentiments arise from sympathy. The first is the "sympathy is variable" objection. Sympathy enables us to enter into the feelings of anyone, even strangers, because we resemble everyone to some extent. But it is an essential feature of his account of the natural and spontaneous operation of sympathy that our ability to respond sympathetically to others varies with variations in the associative relations. I am able to sympathize more easily and strongly with someone who resembles me or is related to me by contiguity or causation. The objection is that the moral sentiments can't be based in sympathy because the loves and hatreds that result from the natural and spontaneous workings of sympathy vary, but our moral approval doesn't vary. The second objection is that "virtue in rags" still evokes our approval. Sympathy works by looking at the actual effects of a person's character traits, but sometimes misfortune or lack of opportunity may prevent an individual from exercising their good character traits, yet we still admire them.

Hume argues that moral love and hatred spring from sympathy, but only when we regulate our sympathetic reactions by taking up what he calls "the general point of view". There are two regulatory features to the general point of view. The first is that we survey a person's character from the perspective of the person and his usual associates-friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers. We sympathize with the person and the people with whom that person regularly interacts and judge character traits in terms of whether they are good or bad for these people. Second, we regulate sympathy further by relying on general rules that specify the general effects and tendencies of character traits rather than sympathizing with their actual effects.

By putting together these two regulatory features, we arrive at Hume's idea of the general point of view, which defines a perspective from which we may survey a person's character traits that we share with everyone. When we occupy the general point of view, we sympathize with the person herself and her usual associates, and come to admire the person for traits that are normally good for everyone. The general point of view is, for Hume, the moral perspective. We do not experience the moral sentiments unless we have already taken up the general point of view. The moral sentiments and the concepts to which they give rise are products of taking up that standpoint.

Hume offers the claim that we admire four sorts of character traits-those that are useful or immediately agreeable to the agent or to others-as an empirical hypothesis. While he provides support for it in his discussion of the individual virtues, he also uses his fourfold classification to undermine Christian conceptions of morality. He makes pride a virtue and humility a vice. He throws out the "monkish" virtues-celibacy, fasting, and penance-on the grounds that they are not pleasant or useful to anyone. He also rejects the distinction between virtues and natural talents, which legislators, "divines" and modern moralists defend by claiming that the moral virtues are voluntary, whereas natural talents aren't. Their goal is to reform us-or at least our outward behavior-making us better, when understood in Christian terms. They accordingly restrict the domain of the moral to actions that proceed from character traits because they believe only they can be modified, shaped, and controlled by sanctions, while talents can't. Hume, however, rejects the distinction along with the dubious function these reformers assign to morality.

Hume identifies both what has value and what makes things valuable with features of our psychology. Our first-order sentiments, passions and affections, as well as actions expressive of them, are what have moral value. Our second-order reflective sentiments about our own or other people's sentiments, passions and affections are what give them value. On his view, morality is entirely a product of human nature.

In the "Conclusion" of the second Enquiry, Hume summarizes his explanation of morality with a definition of virtue or merit:

every quality of mind, which is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others, communicates a pleasure to the spectator, engages his esteem, and is admitted under the honourable denomination of virtue or merit. (EPM 9.1.12/277)

This is a precise parallel of his two definitions of cause in the first Enquiry. Both sets of definitions pick out features of events, and both record a spectator's response to those events.

7.3 Self-Interest Theories: Critical Phase in the Enquiry

Hume's second Enquiry is a sustained and systematic attack on the "selfish" or "self-love" theories of Hobbes and Mandeville. He follows Hutcheson in thinking that they assign two distinct roles to self-interest in their accounts of morality: first, moral approval and disapproval are based in a concern for our own interest and, second, the motive of which we ultimately approve is self-interest. Although many people during this period understood Hobbes' theory through Mandeville's lens, Hume believes it is important to distinguish them. As he sees it, Mandeville's theory is superficial and easily dismissed. Hobbes is his main opponent.

Hume's rejection of Hobbes' selfish account of approval and disapproval begins in Section II and ends in Part I of the "Conclusion" of the Enquiry. Like Hutcheson, he mistakenly supposes that Hobbes was offering a rival theory of approval and disapproval. We approve of people's character traits when they benefit us and disapprove of them when they harm us. Hume looks at each of the four types of virtue and argues that in each case, our approval does not spring from a concern for our own happiness, but rather from sympathy.

In Section II, Hume argues that one reason we approve of benevolence, humanity, and public spiritedness is that they are useful to others and to society. In Sections III and IV, he argues that the sole ground for approving of justice and political allegiance is that they are useful to society. In Section V, he asks: But useful for whom? Since it is obvious that it has to be "for some body's interest", the question is "Whose interest then?" He assumes there are only two possibilities: approval and disapproval spring either from sentiments that are interested or from a disinterested source.

According to Hume, Hobbes' "deduction of morals from self-love" begins with our realization that we cannot subsist alone. A social order provides security, peace, and mutual protection, conditions that allow us to promote our own interests better than if we lived alone. Our own good is thus bound up with the maintenance of society. Although Hume agrees with Hobbes up to this point, he rejects his explanation that we approve of justice, benevolence, and humanity because they promote our own happiness.

Hume is confident that "the voice of nature and experience" will show that Hobbes' theory, understood in this way, is mistaken. Borrowing many of Hutcheson's arguments, he points out that if approval and disapproval were based on thoughts about the possible advantages and disadvantages to us of people's characters and actions, we would never feel approval and disapproval of people from "very distant ages and remote countries", since they cannot possibly affect us. We would never admire the good deeds of our enemies or rivals, since they are hurtful to us. We would also never approve or disapprove of characters portrayed in novels or movies, since they are not real people and cannot possibly help or harm us. We approve of character traits and actions that are useful not because they benefit us, but because we sympathize with the benefits they bestow on others or society.

Hume next examines the remaining three types of character traits-those that are useful to the agent (industriousness, good judgment), agreeable to the agent (cheerfulness) or agreeable to others (politeness, decency). Why, for example, do we approve of industriousness and good judgment, character traits that are primarily advantageous to the possessor? In most cases they are of absolutely no benefit to us and, in cases of rivalry, they counteract our own interest. We approve of these character traits not because they are beneficial to us, but because we sympathize with the benefits they confer on others. Hume takes this as further evidence against Hobbes' explanation in terms of self-interest and in support of his sympathy-based account.

In Part I of the "Conclusion", Hume complains that Hobbes' self-love theory is unable to explain two important features of our moral sentiments: we tend to approve of the same sorts of character traits and we are able to morally evaluate anyone, at any time or place. If our approval and disapproval were based on thoughts about our own benefits and harms, the moral sentiments would vary from person to person and for the same person over time. We wouldn't have moral feelings about most people, since most people don't affect us. The moral sentiments spring from our capacity to respond sympathetically to others.

Hume is equally adamant that any explanation of the motives that prompt us to virtuous actions in terms of self-interest is mistaken. He opposes them in Appendix II of the Enquiry, which was originally part of Section II, "Of Benevolence". He follows Hutcheson in thinking that the issue is whether the various benevolent affections are genuine or arise from self-interest. Once again he distinguishes Mandeville's from Hobbes' explanations of benevolence and takes Hobbes to be his main opponent. On Hume's reading of Hobbes, while we approve of kindness, friendship, and other benevolent affections, any desire to benefit others really derives from self-interest, although we may not always be conscious of its influence on those desires.

Hume offers two arguments against this selfish view. He first asks us to consider cases in which people are motivated by a genuine concern for others, even when such concern could not possibly benefit them and might even harm them. We grieve when a friend dies, even if the friend needed our help and patronage. How could our grief be based in self-interest? Parents regularly sacrifice their own interests for the sake of their children. Non-human animals care about members of their own species and us. Is their concern a "deduction" of self-interest? He concludes that these and "a thousand other instances ... are marks of a general benevolence in human nature, where no interest binds us" (EPM App 2.11/300).

Hume supplements this argument from experience with a highly compressed sketch of an argument he borrows from Butler. Happiness consists in the pleasures that arise from the satisfaction of our particular appetites and desires. It is because we want food, fame, and other things that we take pleasure in getting them. If we did not have any particular appetites or desires, we would not want anything and there would be nothing from which we would get pleasure. To get the pleasures that self-love aims at, we must want something other than happiness itself.

7.4 Justice: Constructive Phase

Hume rightly showcases his pioneering account of justice. In the Treatise, he emphasizes the distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. The natural virtues-being humane, kind, and charitable-are character traits and patterns of behavior that human beings would exhibit in their natural condition, even if there were no social order. The artificial virtues-respecting people's property rights, fidelity in keeping promises and contracts, and allegiance to government-are dispositions based on social practices and institutions that arise from conventions.

Hume believes that nature has supplied us with many motives-parental love, benevolence, and generosity-that make it possible for us to live together peacefully in small societies based on kinship relations. One of his important insights is that nature has not provided us with all the motives we need to live together peacefully in large societies. After arguing in Treatise 3.2.1 that justice is artificial, in T 3.2.2, he asks two different questions: What motivates human beings to establish the rules of justice that give rise to property rights, and why do we approve of people who obey these rules of justice? The first question concerns justice as a practice constituted by its rules. The second concerns justice as a virtue, a person's disposition to obey the rules of justice.

Hume argues that we enter into a series of conventions to bring about practices, each of which is a solution to a problem. Each convention gives rise to new problems that in turn pressure us to enter into further conventions. The convention to bring about property rights is only the first of several into which we enter. After property rights are established, we enter into conventions to transfer property and to make promises and contracts. According to him, we are by nature cooperators, although at first we cooperate only with members of our own family. But it is also advantageous for us to cooperate with strangers, since it allows us to produce more goods and to exchange them. All three conventions are prior to the formation of government. On Hume's view, it is possible for there to be a peaceful society of property owners who transfer and exchange material possessions before there is government.

Hume argues that the practice of justice is a solution to a problem we naturally face. The problem is that since we care most about our family and close friends, but material goods are scarce and portable, we are tempted to take goods from strangers to give to our family and friends. Disputes over these goods are inevitable, but if we quarrel we will forfeit the benefits that result from living together in society-increased power, ability, and security. The solution to the problem is to establish property rights. We make rules that specify who has a right to what, and agree to follow the rules and to keep our hands off the property of others. Hume was one of the first to see that what is useful is the practice of justice, rather than individual acts of justice. Like Hobbes, he believes that it is in our interest to have the practice of justice in place.

As we just saw, Hume parts company with Hobbes when he answers the second question about why we approve of people who obey the rules of justice. If Hobbes' answer in terms of self-interest is excluded, he thinks only one possibility remains. We approve of just people not because they benefit us but because we sympathize with the benefits they bestow on others and society as a whole. Hume thus explains our approval of justice by appealing to the same principle he invoked to explain our approval of the natural virtues. Thus

self-interest is the original motive to the establishmentof justice: but a sympathy with public interest is the source of the moral approbation, which attends that virtue. (T 3.2.2.24/499-500)

In Part 2 of the "Conclusion" of the Enquiry, Hume raises a serious problem with his account of justice. While it is in our interest to have the practice of justice in place, it may not always be in our interest to obey its rules in every case. This is the free rider problem. The free rider, whom Hume calls the sensible knave, wants to get the benefits that result from having a practice in place without having to always follow its rules. He knows that the only way to obtain the advantages of social cooperation is for the practice of justice to be in place, but he also realizes that a single act of injustice will not significantly damage the practice. Most people will obey the rules of justice, so if he commits one act of injustice, the institution will not be in any danger of collapsing. Suppose he has the opportunity to commit an act of injustice that will benefit him greatly. Why shouldn't he?

Hume confesses that if the sensible knave expects an answer, he is not sure there is one that will convince him.

If his heart rebel not against such pernicious maxims, if he feel no reluctance to thoughts of villainy or baseness, he has indeed lost a considerable motive to virtue.... (EPM 9.2.23/283)

There is no general agreement about whether Hume actually provides an answer to the sensible knave and if he does, whether it is adequate.

8. Philosophy of Religion

Hume wrote forcefully and incisively on almost every central question in the philosophy of religion, contributing to ongoing debates about the reliability of reports of miracles, the immateriality and immortality of the soul, the morality of suicide, and the natural history of religion, among others. All his work excited heated reactions from his contemporaries, and his arguments still figure centrally in discussions of these issues today.

Hume's greatest achievement in the philosophy of religion is the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which is generally regarded as one of the most important and influential contributions to this area of philosophy. While all Hume's books provoked controversy, the Dialogues were thought to be so inflammatory that his friends persuaded him to withhold them from publication until after his death.

The Dialogues are a sustained and penetrating critical examination of a prominent argument from analogy for the existence and nature of God, the argument from design. The argument from design attempts to establish that the order we find in the universe is so like the order we find in the products of human artifice that it too must be the product of an intelligent designer.

8.1 The Characters

Cleanthes and Demea represent the central positions in the eighteenth-century natural religion debate. Cleanthes embodies its dominant, progressive strain, consisting primarily of theologians in the British Royal Society, who were fascinated by probability and the previous century's impressive successes in experimental natural philosophy. Convinced that the new science gave witness to God's providence, they rejected traditional a priori proofs, which purported to demonstrate God's existence with mathematical certainty and without appeal to experience. Instead, they used the order and regularity they found in the universe to construct a probabilistic argument for a divine designer.

Holdouts clung to demonstrative proof in science and theology against the rising tide of probability. Demea is the champion of these conservative traditionalists. Since he trots out a lame version of Samuel Clarke's cosmological argument in Part 9, some have thought that Hume models Demea on him. But Demea lacks Clarke's rigid rationalism. It is more likely that he epitomizes a group of minor theologians such as William King, who stressed God's incomprehensibility and resorted to a priori arguments only when they absolutely needed them.

8.2 God's Natural Attributes

Demea holds that God is completely unknown and incomprehensible; all we can say is that God is a being without restriction, absolutely infinite and universal. Cleanthes is adamant that the argument from design establishes all of God's traditional attributes. Natural objects and human artifacts resemble one another, so by analogy, their causes also resemble each other. God is therefore like a human mind, only very much greater in every respect.

Demea objects that the argument's conclusion is only probable, but Philo responds that the real problem is that the analogy is so weak. He launches a battery of arguments to show just how weak it is. The dissimilarities between human artifacts and the universe are more striking than their similarities. We only experience a tiny part of the universe for a short time; much of what we do experience is unknown to us. How can we legitimately infer anything about remote parts of the universe, much less the universe as a whole?

Philo, however, moves quickly away from chipping at the argument's strength to questioning the intelligibility of its conclusion. We have no experience of the origin of a universe. Since causal inference requires a basis in experienced constant conjunction between two kinds of things, how can we legitimately draw any conclusion whatsoever about the origin of the universe? Does it even require a cause? One or many? Does the cause of the universe itself require a cause? The problem, then, is not just that the analogy is weak; the real problem is that it attempts to take us beyond what we can know.

Meanwhile, Demea derides Cleanthes' anthropomorphism while remaining smugly satisfied with what Cleanthes disparagingly calls his mysticism. The barbs they throw at each other, and the speeches Philo goads them to make, help create a dilemma that Philo uses them to construct. He directs the dilemma at Cleanthes, but it affects both characters, although Demea is slow to realize this. He thinks Philo is in league with him in detailing the problems with Cleanthes' anthropomorphism.

Challenging Cleanthes to explain what he means by God's mind, Philo pushes him to admit that he means "a mind like the human". Cleanthes, taking the bait, responds, "I know of no other" (DCNR 5.4/42). He argues that mystics like Demea are no better than atheists, since they make God so remote and incomprehensible that he bears no resemblance to human characteristics. Philo adds that although we regard God as perfect, perfection-as we understand it-is relative, not absolute, so we can't conclude that we grasp God's perfections. Since all God's attributes involve perfection-perfect knowledge, perfect power, perfect goodness-we shouldn't think that any of his attributes resemble or are even analogous to ours. But this means that we don't know what we're talking about when we talk about God using the familiar terms we apply to human minds.

Philo continues to detail just how inconvenient Cleanthes' anthropomorphism really is. If he accepts the argument from design, he must be committed to a God who is finite in all respects. But what does it mean to say that God is finitely perfect? Once you admit that God is finite, you've opened a can of worms, for there are all sorts of equally probable alternatives to intelligent design. Why think that the universe is more like a human artifact than an animal or a vegetable? To illustrate, Philo throws out a number of outlandish alternative hypotheses. For instance, if you were a spider on a planet of spiders, wouldn't you naturally believe that a giant spider spun an immense web to create the world?

Cleanthes' design hypothesis is so underdetermined by the evidence that the only reasonable approach is to abandon any attempt to adjudicate among it and its many alternatives. Total suspension of judgment is the only reasonable response. Otherwise, we go beyond the bounds of anything to which we can give specific content.

The dilemma Philo has constructed encapsulates the issue about the content of the idea of God that is central to the critical aspect of Hume's project in the Dialogues. If you accept that God's attributes are infinitely perfect, you are using ordinary terms without their ordinary meaning, so that they do not have any clear meaning. If you deny God's infinite perfection, you can give him understandable attributes, but only because they are amplified human characteristics. The closer Cleanthes comes to regarding God's mind as like a human mind, the closer he comes to regarding God's attributes as being like human attributes, and the less Godlike his "God" is. We can only give the idea of God intelligible content at the perilously high cost of denying that he is really God. To do so is to abandon God for some kind of superhero.

At the end of Part 8, which concludes their discussion of God's natural attributes, Demea still thinks that Philo and he are partners. He remains clueless about Philo's strategy until the very end of Part 11, when he finally realizes that he too is caught in the trap Philo has sprung.

8.3 God's Moral Attributes

Demea begins the discussion in Part 10. Attempting to save face from his recent drubbing, he suggests that we don't accept the truths of religion as a result of reasoning, but from what we feel when confronted with how helpless and miserable we are. Religion is based on feelings of fear and anxiety that arise from awareness of our "imbecility and misery" (DCNR 10.1/68). Our forms of worship are attempts to appease unknown powers that oppress and torment us.

Philo joins in, claiming he is convinced that

the best and indeed the only method of bringing everyone to a due sense of religion is by just representations of the misery and wickedness of men. (DCNR 10.2/68)

They proceed with a joint litany of the misery and melancholy of the human condition, topping each other with catalogues of woes. Demea does not realize that Philo may mean very different things by "just representation" and "due sense of religion" than he does, so he fails to realize that Philo is just egging him on.

Philo maintains that we can't evade the facts of disease, famine, and pestilence, except by "apologies, which still farther aggravate the charge" (DCNR 10.16/72). These apologies are theodicies -systematic attempts to reconcile God's goodness with the existence of evil. Demea is also scornful of theodicies, blissfully unaware that all too soon he will be offering his own.

Cleanthes-"smiling"-grants that if Philo can prove that mankind is "unhappy or corrupted", he will have succeeded in doing in religion (DCNR 10.28/74). He thinks he finally has Philo on the ropes. In forcing a sceptic to prove a positive thesis, he must not only succeed at a difficult task, but violates his scepticism in the process. Cleanthes fails to realize that Philo will make his case without needing to prove anything, nor does he realize that he will soon be the one who needs a proof.

Demea objects that Cleanthes exaggerates the dire consequences of acknowledging the human condition, and, despite his earlier vehement rejection of theodicies, offers his own. Sometimes called "the porch view", Demea's theodicy compares our experience of the world to the world as a whole, including the afterlife, to trying to determine the structure of a large building from what little we can see from its porch. From our perspective, we suffer, but from a longer view, either we don't suffer at all, or else our suffering is for our greater good or for the greater good of the world.

Cleanthes retorts that Demea denies the facts, and offers only empty hypotheses, which, if intelligible at all, could only establish their bare possibility, but never their reality. The only way to respond to challenges to God's benevolence is to deny that the human condition is really so miserable.

Cleanthes has now put himself in the position in which he thought he had put Philo. He must establish that the facts are as he claims, and Philo is quick to stress how difficult this will be. By resting his case on such an uncertain point, any conclusion he draws will be equally uncertain.

Philo then ups the ante by granting for the sake of argument that human happiness exceeds human misery. But if God is infinitely powerful, wise, and good, why is there any misery at all? There is no answer that preserves all God's attributes, except to grant that the subject exceeds the limits of our understanding.

Philo concludes by admitting, with less than complete sincerity, that while he was hard pressed to make his case against Cleanthes when the discussion concerned God's natural attributes, where his moral attributes are concerned, he is at ease. He challenges Cleanthes "to tug the laboring oar" and explain how he can infer God's moral attributes from the facts about the human condition (DCNR 10.36/77).

Cleanthes "tugs", but only for one short paragraph. He admits that if we go beyond their usual meanings when we apply human terms to God, what we say is indeed unintelligible. Abandoning all human analogy is thus to abandon natural religion, but preserving it makes it impossible to reconcile evil with an infinite God.

Cleanthes realizes he has painted himself into a corner, but once again he thinks there is a way out. Abandon God's infinity; think of him as "finitely perfect". Then "benevolence, regulated by wisdom, and limited by necessity, may produce just such a world as the present" (DCNR 11.1/78).

Cleanthes doesn't realize that his new theory is worse than his old one. He also doesn't seem to remember Philo's earlier question about what "finitely perfect" might possibly mean. Instead of God, he is now committed to some kind of superhero. Besides, the story he is telling is itself a theodicy. His superhero's limitations explain why he cannot eliminate evil, or create an evil-free world.

In any case, Cleanthes is no better off than he was before. Conjectures may show that the data are consistent with the idea of God, but are never sufficient to prove that he actually exists.

Philo then proceeds to outline four possible hypotheses about the cause of the universe: it is perfectly good; it is perfectly evil; it is both good and evil; it is neither good nor evil. Given the evil we know exists, the data is at best mixed, so we can't establish either of the first two hypotheses. The regularity and uniformity of the general laws we find in experience is sufficient to discount the third, so the fourth seems the most probable. On that hypothesis, the cause of the universe is entirely indifferent to the amount of good and evil in the world.

These points about natural evil also apply to moral evil. We have no more reason to think that God's righteousness resembles human righteousness than we have to think that his benevolence resembles human benevolence. We have even less reason, in fact, since moral evil outweighs moral goodness more than natural evil outweighs natural goodness.

In addition, Cleanthes' new form of anthropomorphism is saddled with tracing moral evil back to God. Since every effect must have a cause, either the chain of causes goes back infinitely, or it stops with the original principle that is the ultimate cause of all things-God.

At this point, Demea, who has become increasingly agitated during Philo's speech, interrupts. He finally realizes that the case Philo is making cuts against his own view as much as it cuts against Cleanthes'. Although it might appear that Demea can retreat to some form of the theodicy he sketched earlier, the extent to which Philo's argument upsets him suggests that he now realizes it is inadequate. If he leans on the mystery-mongering he has professed until now, Philo has shown that, because of its lack of specific content, it does not point exclusively to a good God. It may just as well commit him to a supreme being who is "beyond good and evil" and is totally indifferent to morality. Commitment without content turns out to be no commitment at all. Demea realizes this, dimly at least, as he leaves the conversation.

8.4 The Conclusion: Part 12

With Demea's departure, Cleanthes and Philo are left to finish the conversation. Their tone is conciliatory, so conciliatory that Philo says he must "confess" that although he is less cautious about natural religion than any other subject,

no one has a deeper sense of religion impressed on his mind, or pays more profound adoration to the divine Being, as he discovers himself to reason, in the inexplicable contrivance and artifice of nature. (DCNR 12.2/89)

Philo's "confession" paves the way for a blockbuster that has puzzled generations of readers. Philo seems to reverse field, apparently recanting what he has argued for so forcefully. He grants Cleanthes that "a purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker" (DCNR 12.2/89).

His remarks are, however, by no means straightforward. Some take Philo-and, by implication, Hume-to be outing himself as a closet theist. Others conclude that, since he holds all the cards at this point, he can afford to be conciliatory. Read ironically, Philo could be saying that while "careless and stupid" observers are struck by purpose, intention, and design in the universe, careful, critical, intelligent ones are not. But there is no need to force the irony here. Read straight, nature's "contrivance and artifice" is "inexplicable" precisely because reason can discover nothing about God's natural or moral attributes. Everyone-even the stupid and careless-can see that the parts of animals and plants have functions, and so can easily understand why "an anatomist, who discovered a new organ or canal, would never be satisfied until he had also discovered its use and intention" (DCNR 12.2/90).

Recognizing that an organism's parts have uses- functions -says nothing about whether their uses or functions are due to a designer's plan, so Philo's acknowledgement implies nothing about whether he now accepts the design hypothesis. In fact, what he says here reiterates his position in Part 8, that function alone is no proof of divine design:

it is in vain ... to insist on the uses of the parts of animals or vegetables and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain know how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted? (DCNR 8.9/61)

No one should deny design in this sense, so long as they do so "without any religious purpose" (DCNR 12.2/90). Far from reversing himself, then, Philo's position is continuous with the line he has taken throughout the Dialogues.

As the conversation continues, Philo provides a diagnosis of the dispute. While the works of nature do bear "a great analogy" to the products of human artifice, as its proponents claim, there are also considerable differences. He suspects that this may be the source of the intractability of the controversy, which suggests that it may be at bottom "somewhat of a dispute of words" (DCNR 12.6/92).

But verbal disputes can be resolved-or dissolved-by providing clear definitions. However, the dilemma about the content of our idea of God that Philo has constructed clearly implies that such a constructive solution is not possible here.

Philo explains why only a critical solution is possible by offering a deeper diagnosis of the problem. Although the dispute may appear to be merely verbal, it is in fact "still more incurably ambiguous", for

there is a species of controversy, which, from the very nature of language and of human ideas, is involved in perpetual ambiguity, and can never, by any precaution or any definitions, be able to reach a reasonable certainty or precision. These are the controversies concerning the degrees of any quality or circumstance. (DCNR 12.7/92)

This is exactly what the dispute over intelligent design is about. Analogies are always matters of degree, and the degrees of the qualities involved in the design argument aren't capable of exact measurement. The controversy thus "admits not of any precise meaning, nor consequently of any determination" (DCNR 12.7/93). The dispute about design is actually worse than a verbal dispute.

That is why anyone, even an atheist, can say, with equal plausibility, that "the rotting of a turnip, the generation of an animal, and the structure of human thought" all "probably bear some remote analogy to each other" (DCNR 12.7/93). That is why Philo, without renouncing any of his previous claims, can assent to the "somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined", and, as we have seen, indefinable proposition into which

the whole of natural theology ... resolves itself ... that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. (DCNR 12.33/101)

Anything is like anything else in some remote respect. So the ordering principle of the universe, if indeed there is one, can be absolutely anything.

If this is all there is to "the whole of natural theology", then we can certainly conclude that the argument's conclusion has no religiously significant content. But it has no religiously significant content because Philo's critique has drained it of any content whatsoever. Cleanthes' design hypothesis is not just false; it is unintelligible.

The conversation began with all three participants agreeing that their topic was to discuss only God's nature, not his existence. As it concludes, it is no longer clear that these questions are really so distinct as originally assumed. We don't know what we're talking about when we talk about a God whose nature is inconceivable, incomprehensible, indeterminate, and indefinable. What, then, are we to make of the claim about his existence?

The Dialogues draw out the consequences of Hume's statement, in the first Enquiry, that

the idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. (EHU 2.6/19)

If we insist on "augmenting without limit", we let loose the moorings that give intelligible content to God's intelligence, wisdom, and goodness. If we stop short of the limit, we may have content, but we have also lost God.

Bibliography

Primary Literature

Hume's Works

The standard critical edition of Hume's philosophical writings is The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume, currently in progress. The General Editors are Tom L. Beauchamp, the late David Fate Norton, and the late M.A. Stewart. The following volumes, in order of publication, are now in print:

An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom. L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

A Dissertation on the Passions and The Natural History of Religion, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp and Mark A. Box, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2021.

Oxford is also simultaneously keeping these two long-familiar editions of the Treatise and the Enquiries in print, in order to "ensure their continued availability":

[T] A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Page references in this entry are to this edition. [It also contains Hume's "Abstract" of theTreatise. Abbreviated [Abstract], with paragraph references also to this edition.]

[EHU] An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, and [EPM]An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Both are contained inEnquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd edition, revised by P. H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Page references in this entry are to this edition.

Other Works by Hume

The Letters of David Hume, edited by J.Y.T. Grieg, 2 volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932. [HL]

"My Own Life" (Hume's Autobiographical Essay), in HL 1-7].

New Letters of David Hume, edited by Raymond Klibansky and Ernest C. Mossner, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.

Further Letters of David Hume, edited by Felix Waldman, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 2014.

Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, edited by Dorothy Coleman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. [Abbreviated [DCNR], wirth page references to this edition.]

Other Primary Literature

Bentham, J., 1776, A Fragment on Government, J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Hobbes, T., 1651, Leviathan, in E. Curley (ed.),Leviathan, with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.

Kant, I., 1783, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as a Science, in H. Allison and P. Heath (eds.),Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 19-170

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---, 2003 A Defense of Hume on Miracles, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

---, 2009, Hume's Skeptical Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Frasca-Spada, M., 1998, Space and the Self in Hume's Treatise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Frasca-Spada, M. and P.J.E. Kail (eds.), 2005, Impressions of Hume, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Garfield, J.L., 2019, The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume's Treatise from the Inside Out, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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---, 2015, Hume, London and New York: Routledge.

Harris, J.A., 2005, Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Born in Edinburgh, Hume spent his childhood at Ninewells, his family's modest estate in the border lowlands. He came from a "good family" (MOL 2)-socially well connected but not wealthy.

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With Dume and other's writings popularising the idea of the artistic 'Genius', Beethoven became an obvious candidate for this position. After his death he was immortalised with focus on the originality and his works continued to be played, even ones that during his life were not so well received. The Romantic characteristics of his music, the later work's introspection, emotive qualities and exact scoring set an example for how a 'genius' composer works.

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The Romantic idea of music or art made for no real reason, just to exist for art's sake in its abstract form. This links to the idea of the artistic genius, and feeds into the Romantic fascination with aesthetic beauty --> Beauty for beauty's sake, art for art's sake. The idea was brought about by Romantic philosophers such as E.T.A Hoffman and Tieck, but the term itself was first used in 1846 as a descriptor for Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a programme written by Richard Wager, another composer who is also heralded in this category of 'genius' composers.

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With a characteristically broad and provocative treatment, Dahlhaus examines a single music-aesthetical idea from various historical and philosophical viewpoints. "Essential reading for anyone interested in the larger intellectual framework in which Romantic music found its place, a framework that to a remarkable degree has continued to shape our image of music."-Robert P.

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Compare this to the earlier listening of the 1st Symphony. Can you hear the evolution and change in style? How does this connect to the changing Romantic philosophies and ideas emerging at the time?

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Beethoven 9th Symphony - Herbert Von Karajan (1080p)

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Beethoven; in my opinion, is the most important composer to consider when looking at the formation, aspects and influence of the Classical Canon, being in many ways the starting point of the narrative.

Ideas such as 'genius artists', 'absolute music', 'high art' and the importance given to the composer and their intentions- especially in regard to the resulting restrictions placed on performers- became stable and foundational ideas of the Western Classical Canon, which had large future impact on other composers and performers.

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Franz Lizst was a Hungarian composer and pianist who rose to popularity for his 'virtuosic' playing and flamboyant stage presence. His career serves as an example of the impact of the ideas surrounding the 'genius' composers and 'cultures high-art' that emerged during his lifetime.

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the term 'virtuosity' originally referred to several types of musicians and compsoers, however by the late 18th century it was used so describe an instrumentalist of extreme and singular talent.

By the 19th century, the term was a more derogatory one, being used to describe a performer whose talent was 'merely' technical, and whose stage presence was cheaply crowd-pleasing, overly excessive or flashy.

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The Mephisto Waltzes were a series of 4 pieces names after the 'Mephisto' or 'Devil' in the German legend of Faust. The first two were originally written for orchestra and later rewritten for just piano, while the two latter were written for piano. They, in particular the 1st, serve as perfect examples of Liszt's virtuosic and energetic playing and style.

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Minoru Nojima plays Liszt Mephisto Waltz - live 1985

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Hoffman and 19th Century Music Philosophy

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Hoffman and 19th Century Music Philosophy

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E.T.A Hoffman's essays on Beethoven (1810, 1813) was in line with the Romantic philosophy ideal of 'high art', and promoted the symphony as the pinnacle of high art. For several reasons. He stated that the structure of symphonies lent the music access to a 'higher plane' of art and worked alongside the politics of egalitarianism. He coined the phrase 'Worktreue'- which meant being true to the work.

In other words, the most important factor of the music was the serious and 'true' intentions of the composer. This philosophy did not view the more flashy and bombastic virtuosic playing as respectful or 'true' music

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A Kingdom Not of This World: The Political Context of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Beethoven Criticism

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Later in his career Liszt tried to recover from the stigma in musical circles against virtuosic playing. He changed his performance and composition style to be the more 'respectful' and 'serious' art his contemporaries wanted, even going so far as to apologise for his previous career and look down on other virtuoso's like the violinist Paganini.

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‘In concert halls as well as in private drawing rooms I often played works of Beethoven, Weber and Hummel, and I am ashamed to say that for the sake of winning the applause of a public which was slow in appreciating the sublime and beautiful, I did not scruple to change the pace and the ideas of the compositions; nay, I went so far in my frivolity as to interpolate runs and cadenzas which, to be sure, brought me the applause of the musically uneducated, but led me into paths which I fortunately soon abandoned. I cannot tell you how deeply I regret having thus made concessions to bad taste, which violated the spirit as well as the letter of the music. Since that time has absolute reverence for the masterworks of our great men of genius has completely replaced that craving for originality and personal success which I had in the days too near my childhood.’

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‘May the artist of the future cheerfully drop the vain, egotistic part which, we hope, found in Paganini its last brilliant representative; may he place his goal within and not without himself; and may virtuosity be a means to him, never an end in itself.’

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Liszt serves as a prime example of how the philosophy and narrative of the Classical Canon shaped the perception of music, especially music performance. Liszt's contemporaries criticised him over the lack of deference showed to previous composers like Beethoven, the Canon's narrative already changing how music should be performed, composed and enjoyed.

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Shostakovich was a Russian composer and pianist active during the Soviet Era famous for his early rise to fame and interaction with the Soviet governmental body. By far the most famous and well-known Soviet composer, he is an example of a composer who's narrative was altered after his career- muddying the waters of his beliefs, politics, and person.

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Suite for Variety Orchestra - Waltz No.2 (1956)

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Suite for Variety Orchestra - Waltz No.2 (1956)

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Waltz No.2, or 'Lyrical Waltz' from the Suite No.1 is probably the most well-known and widely appealing piece by Shostakovich. it has been used in several films such as Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut' (1999).

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Dmitri Shostakovich - Waltz No. 2 - Klassik Open Air 2015 Nuremberg (TV)

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Composition and premiere: Shostakovich originally composed what has become known as the Waltz No. 2 in 1955-56 for his score (Op. 99) for the film The First Echelon ( Pervyi eshelon), directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, which had its premiere on April 29, 1956. The waltz was also included in the Suite from The First Echelon (Op. 99a) arranged by Shostakovich and Levon Atovmyan in 1956. The BSO has never performed the Waltz No. 2, but Keith Lockhart led a Boston Pops performance of the waltz in a program celebrating the Ballet Russes in May 2009.

In the late 1950s an anonymous person, probably Shostakovich himself, arranged an orchestral suite from ballet, musical theater, and film music of the 1930s to 1950s, that was mistakenly identified for many years as the Suite for Jazz Orchestra, No. 2; it is now known correctly as the Suite for Variety Orchestra. Waltz No. 2 is the seventh of eight numbers in the Suite for Variety Orchestra.

Between 1929 and 1970, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote scores for almost forty films in a variety of genres, from the eccentric silent feature The New Babylon, to hardcore Stalinist propaganda docudramas like The Fall of Berlin, to probing versions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear. The First Echelon (Pervyi eshelon) was Shostakovich's only collaboration with Mikhail Kalatozov (1903-1973), a distinguished auteur director best known for his classic World War II film The Cranes Are Flying (1957).

The scenario follows a group of enthusiastic young volunteers who travel to barren, remote Kazakhstan to participate in the campaign launched by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for the settlement and agricultural development of the "virgin lands." Shot by acclaimed cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, the film depicts their difficulties in adjusting to the harsh climate and primitive living conditions, but in good Socialist Realist fashion focuses on the ability of Communist Party officials to lead the collective and triumph over adversity and human weaknesses (alcoholism, jealousy, romantic misadventures).

Shostakovich's score includes a cheerful overture, several diegetic (that is, performed within the film's narrative) "mass" songs, fanfares, and two brief sequences set to the music of Waltz No. 2 playing from a loudspeaker. The first occurs in the opening minutes as the arriving volunteers dance in a blizzard. Its reprise occurs during a summertime celebration of the completion of the first permanent dwellings. The full version included in the First Echelon Suite, Op. 99a, is the source for Waltz No. 2 in the Suite for Variety Orchestra.

The "variety" in the orchestration comes from the inclusion of instruments associated with a dance band-four saxophones, guitar, and accordion, creating a casual, circus-like atmosphere. Following traditional ABA waltz form, the outer sections are primarily in C minor and the middle section (in two short episodes) in E-ﬂat major and A-ﬂat major. A sense of unsteadiness results from the subtle shifting between these related tonalities, as does the contrast between the light, suave, irresistible main theme (with prominent quarter note rests in the last phrase) and the underlying darkness of the surrounding accompaniment. An ironic "oom-pah-pah" beat pulses in the double basses and snare drum. The alto saxophone announces the simple, melancholy theme at the outset, later handed off to crooning trombones.

For the broad public, the unassuming, slightly lascivious little Waltz No. 2 has become one of Shostakovich's most recognizable (and most frequently rearranged) compositions. Its fame soared when Stanley Kubrick used it to brilliant effect during the opening moments of his last film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), an erotic psychological mystery drama starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Harlow Robinson
Harlow Robinson is an author, lecturer, and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood's Russians. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Cineaste, and Opera News, and he has written program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Metropolitan Opera.

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Composition and premiere: Shostakovich originally composed what has become known as the Waltz No. 2 in 1955-56 for his score (Op. 99) for the film The First Echelon ( Pervyi eshelon), directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, which had its premiere on April 29, 1956. The waltz was also included in the Suite from The First Echelon (Op.

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Classical Canon and Reshaping Narratives

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Classical Canon and Reshaping Narratives

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The Classical Canon is a narrative that elevates and idolises the composers in its echelons. The idea that many of these composers were people, with faults and ideologies or personalities that contrasted those who supported the Canon, is one that resulted in the 'reshaping' of the narratives surrounding these composers into this ideal, untouchable 'genius'.

This has resulted in several instances of classical composers who have had aspects of their life and history ignored, buried, smeared or simply re-written.

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Article on Gay Erasure in Tchaikovsky's history

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Article on Gay Erasure in Tchaikovsky's history

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Tchaikovsky is an example of the removal his sexuality in personal history of Canon composers. Quite possibly the most famous Russian composer of all time, effort has been made to remove evidence of his queerness from his legacy by a nation that still outlaws such love today.

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PinkNews | Latest lesbian, gay, bi and trans news | LGBTQ+ news

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, often referred to as Peter Tchaikovsky, is among Russia's greatest cultural exports.

He composed Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty, arguably the world's greatest ballets, which sell-out theatres to this day.

His compositions pack London's Royal Albert Hall during the BBC Proms season year in, year out.

Despite being the first Russian composer to find worldwide popularity, the nation of his birth has spent more than 100 years airbrushing the truth about his life.

Tchaikovsky was a gay man.

Historians and classical scholars almost unanimously agree - as letters and diaries, including letters to his brother, Modest, who was also gay, make clear.

According to biographer John Wiley, Tchaikovsky was openly gay all his life, feminising the names of the young men he consorted with, as well as referring to himself as "Petrolina".

Author Konstantin Rotikov, who has written a gay history of St Petersburg, said: "In the case of Tchaikovsky his homosexuality is so well documented by his own writings and the writings of others that it is simply ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

"It's a historical fact. History doesn't change just because we are trying to push a certain agenda today."

As an adult, Tchaikovsky fell in love with his own nephew, Vladimir Davidov (second son of his sister Alexandra) in the 1880s-1890s, to whom he later dedicated the Symphonie Pathétique (1893), shortly before his sudden death.

His lovers included Vladimir Shilovsky, a wealthy young man whom he met at the Moscow Conservatory, who paid for a number of trips for the two of them; Alexei Sofronov, his valet from 1872 to the end of his life, and his pupil Eduard Zak, who killed himself in 1873 (he inspired the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture).

Many brief same-sex affairs are recorded in his cryptographic diary, too, leaving little to the imagination.

Despite the weight of evidence, Soviet Russia set about suppressing the truth in a re-writing of the composer's life which lasts to this day.

In 2013, a Russian screenwriter working on a government funded biopic of his life caused furore when he denied that the composer had been gay.

Yuri Arabov said that the biopic would not focus on the composer's sexuality because, "it is far from a fact that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual."

"Only philistines think this," the screenwriter claimed, adding: "What philistines believe should not be shown in films.

"He was a person without a family who was stuck with the opinion that he supposedly loves men."

The row came during Russia's introduction of heinous anti-gay laws, banning the so-called "promotion" of gay relationships, signed by Vladimir Putin.

As Stephen Fry pointed out at the time, the law was so punitive and extreme that: "Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment."

It's believed references to Tchaikovsky's homosexuality could have made the film vulnerable to the country's anti-gay propaganda laws, and so were removed from the original script.

Responding to the claims, Vladimir Putin surprised many when he cited the composer's prominence in Russian culture as 'proof' that Russia is not homophobic.

Putin told Associated Press: "Truth be told, we don't love him because of that, but he was a great musician and we all love his music."

But even Russia's own culture minster, Vladimir Medinsky, has attempted to deny the fact, claiming there is "no evidence" to suggest he was homosexual.

Mr Medinsky claimed Tchaikovsky was simply a lonely old man who, in his words, "failed to marry."

Sanitation of the truth and the intense expectations of heterosexuality were not unknown to Tchaikovsky during his life.

Age 36 he married a woman, following the agonising social pressures of those around him.

In a heartbreaking letter to his gay brother - who lived openly with his own boyfriend - Tchaikovsky wrote: "I am now going through a very critical period of my life.

"I will go into more detail later, but for now I will simply tell you, I have decided to get married. It is unavoidable.

"I must do it, not just for myself but for you, Modeste, and all those I love.

"I think that for both of us our dispositions are the greatest and most insuperable obstacle to happiness, and we must fight our natures to the best of our ability."

He added: "How appalling to think that those who love me are sometimes ashamed of me.

"In short, I seek marriage or some sort of public involvement with a woman so as to shut the mouths of assorted contemptible creatures whose opinions mean nothing to me, but who are in a position to cause distress to those near to me."

It would not be the only woman he married - there were three, in total - but all of the marriages failed.

Tchaikovsky died suddenly in the autumn of 1893, age 53, with the cause of death attributed to cholera.

However many now suspect he took his own life, as the news of a love affair with his own nephew shocked relatives.

When an acquaintance found out of the incestual, gay romance, they were so scornful that they immediately wrote to the Tsar to inform him of Tchaikovsky's behaviour.

It followed that Tchaikovsky was summoned to a "court of honour", where eight former pupils subjected him to five hours of intense discussion about his future.

At the end of the meeting it was agreed he would kill himself.

Within two days of the 'court', news of his apparent cholera spread and he died quickly.

Though suicide has increasingly been attributed as the cause of death by historians, the truth may never be known.

What we do know is that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky has brought joy to millions, if not billions of people.

It is a matter of great regret that, to this day, Russian society celebrates his work, while denying the truth of the man who gave it to them.

27 August - Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5, performed by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louis Langree
31 August - Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony, performed by BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov
3 September - Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 3, performed by Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev

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One of the most famous Russians was a gay man, but the country refuses to admit it

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The nation of his birth has spent more than 100 years airbrushing the truth about his life.

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Claiming to be the memoirs of the composer, this book sparked one of the biggest controversies in musicology history- it depicts Shostakovich as a 'secret dissident' against the Soviet regime. He posited that his compositions contained hidden messages and meanings that were to spark revolution and rebellion against the regime. The widely popular book was found to have been faked only after its ideas had been absorbed into the public conciousness.

The idea that Shostakovich was secretly against the Soviet regime better allowed his music to be appreciated by Western (particularly American) audiences. It made him as a person more palatable to western culture, and so was an idea that still permeates today.

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Since the English-language controversy about Shostakovich has recently won notoriety in the national presses of the USA, Canada, and Britain -- a notoriety often badly researched and faultily reported -- it seems timely to offer an introduction to the main lines of the debate.
The Shostakovich debate, which concerns the interpretation of the composer's life and music, is, broadly speaking, conducted between two opposing sides: revisionists and anti-revisionists. Anti-revisionists are sometimes referred to by revisionists as "Taruskinites", an allusion to leading anti-revisionist Richard Taruskin. Similarly, revisionists have been referred to by anti-revisionists as "Volkovists", an allusion to Solomon Volkov, whose book -- presented as Shostakovich's authentic memoirs but disputed as such by anti-revisionists -- constitutes one of the main bones of contention in the debate. (Revisionists see the question of Testimony as a sub-issue within the larger argument.) There are also shades of opinion between revisionism and anti-revisionism. Some participants argue for a "balanced" point of view between the opposing positions. Revisionists, though, maintain that such claims, far from balanced, are instead "pseudo-centric".

What do these terms mean and what do they stand for? Answering this requires a brief summary of the issues. A Chronology of the main events and statements in the evolution of the debate is provided for further clarification.

Shostakovich, as of 1975

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) lived for all but the first eleven years of his life under the communist system of the Soviet Union. As such, he was seen by the outside world as the regime's musical laureate -- a composer who wrote music for Soviet public celebrations and in honour of important events in Soviet history, as well as for films which conveyed a Soviet point of view (including depictions of Stalin in heroic terms). Lavishly honoured by the Soviet system, Shostakovich held several public offices and, in 1960, joined the Communist Party. Many articles expressing views commensurate with those of the Soviet state appeared over his signature in Soviet publications during his life. He often read official speeches at Soviet cultural occasions and never expressed public disagreement with the Soviet system. On two occasions, however -- in 1936 and in 1948 -- he was publicly, and severely, reprimanded for failing to supply what was demanded of him as a Soviet composer. Through collaboration with the anti-establishment poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko during the early 1960s, Shostakovich expressed a critical attitude towards some aspects of the Soviet system in his Thirteenth Symphony. It was also discovered in 1989 that he had composed a secret satire on the events surrounding his public censure in 1948: Rayok, subtitled "A Manual for Beginners". When Shostakovich died in 1975, he was hailed in both the USSR and the free world as a great Soviet composer, his belief in communism being scarcely doubted. His works were understood as written either in explicit solidarity with the Soviet system or as "pure music" (i.e., without symbolic ["extra-musical"] references, beyond the usual emotional and intellectual concerns routinely ascribed to less "political" composers).

The Testimony affair: a question of "authenticity"

Although it was possible to maintain a quite different view of Shostakovich even in 1975, a major shift in the Western view of the composer did not begin until four years later when Harper & Row published Testimony, the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov. Shostakovich, it seemed, had dictated the contents of this book to Volkov, a young music journalist from Leningrad, during the early 1970s. The book was then smuggled out to the USA, translated into English, and published in 1979. Testimony was received with considerable excitement in both the West and the USSR. Depicting Shostakovich as scathing about Stalinism, as cynical about the Soviet system in general, and as claiming that many of his supposedly "pure" compositions contained covert musical symbols of dissent, the book revised his perceived image overnight. Some compared its impact on the musical world with that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago on the general audience. ( Testimony has, till the present [2000], not been published in Russian.)

A backlash followed. Within a month of publication (October 1979), Testimony was repudiated by the Soviet authorities as "a lie from beginning to end". This opened a sustained Soviet campaign against the book which included a denunciation of Testimony by the composer's son Maxim (then living with his family in the USSR). More damaging was an essay by New York musicologist Laurel Fay, "Shostakovich verses Volkov: Whose Testimony?", which appeared in The Russian Review a year later. As well as making a number of factual criticisms of Testimony, Fay identified eight passages in the book which she asserted had been "plagiarised" by Volkov from previously published articles by Shostakovich. These passages all occurred at the beginning of chapters in the book -- the pages on which Shostakovich's standard inscription ("Chital. [Read.] -- D. Shostakovich) appear. These discoveries indicated a hoax. Because Volkov made no response to Fay, it became generally assumed that Testimony was, partially or wholly, fraudulent. One American musicologist, Malcolm Hamrick Brown, has since called Volkov "a liar" ( Notes, 1994); another, Richard Taruskin, wrote "as any proper scholar could plainly see, the book was a fraud" ( The New Republic, 1989). Consequently, the popular perception among journalists has been that Testimony is riddled with errors and almost entirely unreliable (e.g., Vulliamy, The Observer, 12/3/2000: "for the most part, spurious and full of plagiarisms"). The book has also been spoken of as a characteristically "propagandist" document of the Cold War.

This situation persisted until 1990 when Ian MacDonald published The New Shostakovich, a reassessment of Shostakovich's life and work within the context of Soviet history and culture. The author pointed out that the composer's son Maxim, now living in the West and free of Soviet pressure to maintain otherwise, had, in 1986, endorsed Testimony: "It's true. It's accurate... The basis of the book is correct." MacDonald further argued that a contextual approach to Shostakovich (until then largely neglected in Western studies of the composer) emphatically supported the essential authenticity of Testimony. He conceded, however, that Laurel Fay's criticisms rendered the book's claim to literal authenticity impossible to sustain: " Testimony is a realistic picture of Dmitri Shostakovich. It just isn't a genuine one."

No further change occurred until 1998 with the publication of Shostakovich Reconsidered by American musicologist Allan B. Ho and Russian concert pianist Dmitry Feofanov. Ho and Feofanov's book opened with a 300-page analysis of the case against Testimony, repudiating all charges of unreliable information and challenging Laurel Fay's accusation that the signed passages represented "plagiarism" by Volkov with fraudulent intent. Marshalling evidence from six leading experts on "superior memory", each of whom were prepared to attest that Shostakovich could have recycled this material from memory, the authors further pointed out that the book's first page, which contains unrecycled controversial material, was also signed by the composer. Ho and Feofanov went on to charge certain academics with "covering up" evidence and statements which support Testimony's authenticity. Their "case for the defence" in respect of Testimony was widely accepted as substantial, even by those previously sceptical about the book (including the British musicologist David Fanning).

In April 2000, Laurel Fay responded to Ho and Feofanov's criticisms of her 1980 essay on Testimony. For details, see Chronology Part 4.

The scope of the Shostakovich debate

A common misconception, even among some participants in the discussion, is that its subject is identical with the controversy over the "authenticity" of Testimony (e.g., the epithet "Volkovist", recently coined by the Canadian broadcaster Tamara Bernstein). In fact, the wider Shostakovich debate involves a general discussion about the composer's creative intentions and the meaning, if any, of his music. In this connection, wide differences of opinion continue to be voiced concerning Shostakovich's orientation within the politico-cultural context of the Soviet Union -- e.g., was he an earnest communist, a cowardly trimmer, a naive blunderer, or a secret dissident? Attached to these differences of opinion are comparably diverse verdicts on his moral stature in relation to his musical creativity and personal conduct.

In these respects, a more vital source for revisionists than Testimony is Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994), a monumental collection of statements about the composer by his Russian and East European contemporaries: family, friends, and colleagues. No one has so far disputed that Shostakovich: A Life Remembered paints a picture of Shostakovich and his context nearly identical to that given in Testimony (and also in Rostislav Dubinsky's memoir Stormy Applause). For this reason, as Ian MacDonald has argued, Wilson's book currently forms the evidential backbone of the revisionist case -- yet, unlike Testimony, it has never become a subject of debate. (It may be significant that anti-revisionists scarcely mention, let alone address, either Wilson's material or her revisionist linking narrative.)

Within the debate, eye-witness material such as that marshalled by Elizabeth Wilson -- material of a kind which has also appeared in other books, articles, and interviews -- is referred to as "small 't' testimony" in order to distinguish it from Solomon Volkov's Testimony.

Revisionism versus anti-revisionism

At its simplest, revisionism consists of the view that Shostakovich was, for much of his life, in conflict with the Soviet regime; and that, as such, his actions, creative and personal, betoken a man of considerable moral stature whose associated thoughts and feelings are tangible in his music, in ways both general and particular. (The particular instances of this orientation consist of a language of musical codes, many of which are already known and others of which are in the process of being discovered.) In this view of Shostakovich, the composer is often said to have been a "secret (or hidden) dissident" - i.e., a moral dissenter who differed from the paradigmatic Soviet dissidents of the 1960s in refraining from public verbal expressions of his dissent, confining this to his music. (Exceptions -- more or less explicit expressions of dissent -- can be found in Shostakovich's letters to Isaak Glikman, in several of his reported statements to friends and colleagues, and in the disputed memoir Testimony.) Anti-revisionists often accuse revisionists of adopting an "ideological" line on Shostakovich which mirrors that of the Soviet Union. Revisionists argue, on the contrary, that the debate is a question not of ideology but of morality.

At its simplest, anti-revisionism takes the form of several, not necessarily mutually exclusive, views of Shostakovich which stand opposed to the idea of him as a "secret dissident" resistant to the Soviet regime. Anti-revisionists see Shostakovich as a morally flawed man for whom Testimony (insofar as any of it can be trusted) represented an attempt to rewrite, and hence justify, an inglorious life. This life was either that of an earnest communist who never seriously questioned the Soviet system; a cowardly trimmer who conformed out of fear and self-seeking cynicism; or a naive blunderer who took on the false appearance of a secret dissident through farcical coincidence or as a result of over-interpretation by his contemporaries or those who came after him. For most anti-revisionists, speculation on the composer's outlook is bogus or irrelevant (although some hardline anti-revisionists remain convinced that he was an orthodox Communist and that "his" public statements are dependable evidence of this). Suggestions that Shostakovich's music contains hidden meanings is, generally, anathema to anti-revisionists, who concede with reluctance and aesthetic distaste any instances of this which cannot be definitely rejected.

How did the terms "revisionism" and "anti-revisionism" come about?

The term "revisionism" in Shostakovich studies was introduced by Ian MacDonald in The New Shostakovich in 1990 and confirmed from the opposing point of view by Richard Taruskin in his article "A Martyred Opera Reflects Its Abominable Time" in The New York Times (6th November 1994) and by Laurel Fay in her book Shostakovich: A Life (1999). The concept, subscribed to by most writers in the debate, is that the views ascribed to revisionism, as defined above, constitute a revision of the image of Shostakovich promulgated by the Soviet authorities (an image largely accepted by Western critics prior to the publication of Testimony in 1979). Some revisionists object to the term on the grounds that truth needs no revising (the truth, in their opinion, being congruent with the "revisionist" view). There is also an unfortunate derogatory association with Holocaust studies whereby the Nazis' genocidal treatment of European Jews is challenged or even denied by "revisionists". Similarly, revisionism in general Soviet studies often takes the form of attempts to "revise" (by way of minimising) the crimes of Stalinism or the culpability of Stalin, thereby creating a use of the term almost exactly opposite to its use in the Shostakovich debate. There seems little possibility of replacing the term "revisionism" as it has come to be used in Shostakovich studies over the last ten years; like its corollary "anti-revisionism", it is essentially a convenient label by which to identify a point of view.

It has become gospel among journalists covering the debate (and among certain of its participants) that it is uniquely acrimonious -- a slanging match which has "raged for twenty years" and in which spectacular insults are incessantly hurled from one side to the other. The truth is not so garish. Other debates in the musical world have been equally, if not more, heated. Recent instances include the controversies surrounding Wagner's aesthetics and Herbert Von Karajan's political affiliations. (Countless other examples, far exceeding the asperity of these modern cases, may be found in Nicolas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective.) Compared with contemporary controversies in other fields -- e.g., the argument concerning German culpability for the Holocaust, the battle between Creationists and Evolutionists in biology, the bitter wrangles over the legacies of Freud and Jung -- the Shostakovich debate is relatively temperate and sporadic.

Little in the way of exchange between revisionism and anti-revisionism took place until 1995, when David Fanning published (in Shostakovich Studies) an essay by the leading anti-revisionist Richard Taruskin entitled "Public lies and unspeakable truth: interpreting Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony". Arguing that to claim Shostakovich to have been "a dissident" amounts to "a self-gratifying anachronism", Taruskin asserted that Ian MacDonald's commentary on the Symphony in The New Shostakovich was "no honourable error" but instead "a vile trivialisation". MacDonald, contended Taruskin, used the critical methods of McCarthyism, wrote like the Soviet state prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, and was "the very model of a Stalinist critic". Later in the same year, Taruskin's colleague Laurel Fay referred to The New Shostakovich as "a moronic tract".

Although these insults raised the temperature considerably, they remain the high-point of direct personal invective in the debate so far. MacDonald responded to Taruskin, Fay, and other anti-revisionists with corresponding sarcasm, but without name-calling. The same method was adopted by Ho and Feofanov in their book (1998) and anti-revisionists have, in the main, reciprocated. Most of the exchanges in the debate are about averagely acidulous for this sort of controversy, as the correspondence pages of any academic journal will confirm. Contrary to Ed Vulliamy ( Observer, 12th March 2000) and Tamara Bernstein ( National Post, 15th March 2000), only Richard Taruskin has used the epithet "Stalinist" against a debating partner (against Ian MacDonald in 1995 and Terry Teachout in 1999). Most revisionists would suggest that the ratio of invective to argument is higher on the anti-revisionist side, but such judgements depend very largely on where one happens to stand and most anti-revisionists would no doubt strongly deny this, contending that the exact opposite is the case.

Shostakovich, as of 2000

Reduced to its simplest elements, the Shostakovich debate is about the sort of man he was, and the kind of music which that sort of man can be reasonably be assumed to have written. In this regard, direct personal invective has begun to emerge again in recent written and spoken statements. This time, though, the target is the composer himself. As will be seen from the accompanying Chronology, anti-revisionists have been effectively attacking Shostakovich as a man -- and revisionists seeking to defend him -- for the last ten years.

Recently, with the appearance of Laurel Fay's biography Shostakovich: A Life, these opposing verdicts on the composer have sharpened up. Writing in The New York Times (6th February 2000), the music critic Joseph Horowitz called Shostakovich "a moral beacon" -- an assessment seconded in the DSCH-L discussion group by, among many others, Ian MacDonald and Martin Anderson, publisher of Ho and Feofanov's Shostakovich Reconsidered. In the same newspaper (5th March 2000), Richard Taruskin mocked this concept of Shostakovich, calling him "a fictional hero". Also in The New York Times (9th March 2000), the opera critic Bernard Holland accused the composer of cowardice, calling him "a mediocre human being" who "toadied and cringed before his Soviet bosses". Interviewed by Tamara Bernstein ( National Post, 15th March 2000), Laurel Fay added to this chorus by dubbing Shostakovich "a wuss" (slang: wimp, wet, gutless wonder).

"A cult of thought-control"

Another recent developmen has been Richard Taruskin's assertion ( New York Times, 5th March 2000) that revisionism constitutes "a clamorous cult of personality" around Shostakovich comparable with that which adhered around Stalin: "Like any such cult, the one around Shostakovich is an instrument of thought control. It fosters orthodoxy, enforces conformism and breeds intolerance of critical thinking." Tamara Bernstein, whose connections with Taruskin are a matter of public record, has joined him ( National Post, 15th March 2000) in likewise denouncing revisionism as "a cult of fanatics", adding that "If you think this sounds silly and sophomoric, you're right".

This new polarisation opens room for a more substantial centrist position on Shostakovich in which it may be argued that current terms and stances are "too black-and-white" and that the truth is to be sought in a "balanced" position in between. Revisionists, however, regard such a position as a false ("pseudo-centric") compromise based on a refusal to confront the circumstances of Shostakovich's life. He was, they concede, as fearful as the majority of Soviet citizens; however, he was also, unlike many Soviet citizens, courageous in sticking to his moral principles in his work wherever he could. Revisionists insist that only deep contextual understanding can allow us to appreciate Shostakovich's qualities of heroism, which are of a kind not readily understood by people raised in a free society.

The broader perspective

The Shostakovich debate is, of course, not as simple as this brief outline may suggest. Many intricate arguments are entailed, much of this discussion focusing on several key compositions in Shostakovich's output and involving a large quantity of background material. Since the content of the Shostakovich debate requires much time and thought to absorb, it is not surprising that there is disagreement about it -- especially in the English-speaking world which, lacking experience of totalitarian rule, is often unaware of its own inherent uncertainty in coming to terms with the products of a society as foreign to it as the former USSR.

In this perspective, it is worth pointing out that "the Shostakovich debate" is very much an English-language phenomenon. No such controversy, for example, exists in either France or Poland where, for many years, Shostakovich has been seen either as insignificant compared with Western modernists (Stravinsky, the Second Viennese School, and the serialists of the 1950s and 1960s) or as a "communist composer" whose music, through its apparent conformity with Soviet politico-aesthetic canons, is intrinsically shoddy. By challenging the second of these assumptions, the publication of Testimony in these countries reawoke interest in Shostakovich during the 1980s and 1990s; however, owing to the continuing national musicological preferences for Western modernism, this new interest failed to ignite a revival comparable to that seen in Britain and America in the same period. Doubts over the literal authenticity of Testimony do not, in France or Poland, outweigh the view that the image of Shostakovich conveyed in the book is true to life. In Poland, which shared the system under which Shostakovich lived, this image of the composer is regarded as unsurprising and is consequently not questioned in any fundamental way. Musicologists in France and Poland are more or less oblivious of the Testimony controversy as it exists in Britain and America.

In Germany, which has long held Shostakovich's music in respectful esteem, the contextual approach is well established in musicology, where the preponderance is decisively revisionist. Only one German musicologist (Friedbert Streller) can be described as anti-revisionist; the rest are either neutral specialists in technical and documentary analysis, or contextual scholars with revisionist views of Shostakovich (e.g., Detlef Gojowy, Sigrid Neef, Hilmar Schmalenberg, Frank Schneider, Michael Koball). As in France and Poland, the matter of the literal authenticity of Testimony counts for little in Germany, where the view of Shostakovich conveyed in its pages is consonant with the view of the composer held by most musicians and musicologists. Essentially pragmatically investigative, German Shostakovich scholarship eschews the questions at issue in the UK/USA debate, which, in effect, it regards as either already answered or of no serious significance.

No active equivalent of the Shostakovich debate exists in Russia. Aside from surving close members of the composer's inner circle (and even including some of these), Testimony is known in Russia almost entirely through hearsay. Among such close associates, the view of Shostakovich is generally commensurate with that given in Testimony, although a distinction is often made between the essential veracity of the picture of Shostakovich given in Testimony and the literal authenticity of the book as presented by Solomon Volkov. Aside from Tikhon Khrennikov, the only figure from Shostakovich's former circle to reject "the Testimony view" of Shostakovich was Yuri Levitin. Like the composer Boris Tishchenko and archivist Manashir Yakubov, the composer's third wife Irina is highly critical of both Volkov and Testimony, but does not on principle reject the book's dissident picture. (The International Shostakovich Association, of which Irina is Vice President, holds a view of Shostakovich practically indistinguishable from that conveyed in Testimony itself.) Sofiya Khentova stays aloof from any controversy, as does Galina Ustvolskaya. In the wider musical establishment, more diverse opinions hold sway, including a strain of denying conservatism which has yet to come to terms with the post-Soviet situation. Owing to the systematic Soviet suppression of independent research, knowledge of Soviet-era cultural history, especially among the young in Russia, tends to be superficial or anecdotal.

The challenge of revisionism

The revisionist view of Shostakovich poses several fundamental conceptual challenges to those who take a different view. Apart from the ongoing controversy surrounding Testimony, it is these conceptual challenges, and the various reactions to them, which fuel the debate.

The first such challenge is to classical music's sense of self-sufficiency. A view is often expressed that music should be detachable from history and fully understandable without contexual exegesis. The editor of a British review magazine recently put this position as follows: "Several of Shostakovich's works are brimming with musical codes and enigmas. But should we care? Shostakovich's genius is such that he communicates at all levels. Is our appreciation of Mozart or Shakespeare diminished by the fact that we know so little about their lives?" Many anti-revisionists would agree with this view; indeed, for some, it may be said to define the extent of their anti-revisionism.

Revisionists argue that such thinking is empty. What, they ask, does it mean to claim that Shostakovich communicates "at all levels" or (as BBC Radio 3 Controller Nicholas Kenyon puts it) "suggests an infinite number of possibilities at once"? Is any "statement" by Mozart and Shakespeare interpretable in an infinite number of different ways -- or is the possible range of meaning in such statements constrained by conventions of style and content? Revisionists argue that invocations of infinite levels of interpretation are mere intellectual evasions. As for whether our understanding of Mozart or Shakespeare is diminished by our lack of biographical data about them, we could only answer this question if we possessed the information we presently lack. Without this information, we cannot know what we are missing and thus cannot say whether its absence diminishes our understanding (of Mozart, Shakespeare, or anyone else). Only contextualism -- of the kind which, for the last thirty years, has been standard in all academic fields (except modern musicology) -- can offer appropriate answers.

The suggestion that we may fully appreciate Shostakovich without knowledge of his context carries two implications: (1) that artistic appreciation, contrary to the invocation of infinite "possibilities" or endless "levels", may be finite; (2) that context is a detachable adjunct to the work of art, which should be considered purely subjectively, as if beyond time and place. Revisionism argues that, since we grow and change (and since what we know about a work of art inescapably modifies our view of it), artistic appreciation can never be finite; instead, we are always in a developing relationship with any work of art, as we are with life. Since art is part of life, context cannot be detached from the art born within it (this being the theoretical basis of all contextual historical investigation into the intentions supposedly expressed by artists in their works, and the ways in which these intentions have been interpreted by their audiences ["reception theory"].)

The challenge posed to the individual's subjective response by contextualised art is especially sharp in Shostakovich's case, since, owing to the peculiarities of his context, his music is uniquely confrontational. Listeners preferring the subjective purview of infinite interpretive possibilities have an additional reason to ward off claims that Shostakovich's work contains messages of uncomfortable specificity: such messages, being upsetting, are disruptive to subjective pleasure. As Solomon Volkov has suggested, Shostakovich's music makes one think, not of oneself, but of other people -- and many resent this. Paul Epstein's revisionist booklet for the Emerson Quartet's Shostakovich cycle crystallises this challenge and it will be interesting to see how critics and listeners react to so explicitly "unsubjective" an interpretation.

Beyond these tough challenges to our listening habits, Shostakovich's music poses an equally stark challenge to modern musicology, which, since around 1950, has been more or less exclusively score-centred and structurally analytical. Much of the disquiet caused among Western musicologists by the Shostakovich debate appears to stem from resentment of resurgent contextual issues which mid-20th century musical developments sought to transcend. Few academic specialists in modern music find it easy to accept the possibility that questions of history, politics, biography, and ethics may have to be reintroduced into the study of music because of what we are discovering about Shostakovich.

Given the increasing polarisation of the debate (and the new developments in the rhetorical overtones of anti-revisionism noted above), there seems little prospect of any cessation in the English-language "war" over the interpretation of Shostakovich and his music. To the extent that this debate can be said to obscure understanding of his music, its continuation is regrettable; yet there are real issues at stake in this discussion, and the debate has shed far more light on the composer's life and work than heat or smoke. In order to get a clearer idea of these issues, newcomers are advised to consult the accompanying Chronology of the Debate, which contains much potted comment from statements made during the last twenty or so years, as well as links to over a dozen texts available at this site (and other websites as well).

Boris Schwarz. Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1981. Indiana University Press, 1983.

Claude Samuel (ed). Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya: Russia, Music, and Liberty. 1983. [Tr. Thomas Glasow], Amadeus Press, 1995.

Laurel E. Fay. Shostakovich: A Life. Oxford University Press, 2000.

BACKGROUND

Czeslaw Milosz. The Captive Mind. Secker & Warburg, 1953.

Eugenia Ginzburg. Into the Whirlwind [tr. Paul Stevenson and Manya Harari]. Collins Harvill, 1967; Within the Whirlwind [tr. Ian Boland]. Harcourt Brace, 1981.

Nadezhda Mandelstam. Hope Against Hope [tr. Max Hayward]. Collins Harvill, 1970; Hope Abandoned [tr. Max Hayward]. Collins Harvill, 1974.

Lyubov Shaporina. Diary 1935-39.

Jeffrey Brooks. Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet public culture from revolution to cold war. Princeton University Press, 2000.

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Music under Soviet rule: The Shostakovich Debate: A Manual for Beginners

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Since the English-language controversy about Shostakovich has recently won notoriety in the national presses of the USA, Canada, and Britain -- a notoriety often badly researched and faultily reported -- it seems timely to offer an introduction to the main lines of the debate.

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In 1932 Shostakovich wrote an opera called 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District' Op.29. It was hugely popular after its opening in 1934- being the first opera in Russia to be playing in three different opera halls simultaneously. Stalin attended a performance and the next day a scathing review in the Soviet paper 'Pravda' titled 'muddel not music' practically sunk his career and threatened his life. He only returned to repute with the Party after he wrote his fifth Symphony in 1937.

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While it is clear that his inauguration into the Communist Party in 1960 was one that was somewhat forced, and his appearance at the 1949 Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace held in New York, were examples of the Soviet Union putting pressure on him to follow the party line and obey the regime, there is no reason to believe that Shostakovich was a secret anything. Most likely he was just a man who lived under a regime he had to survive in, his own personal political beliefs are unknown.

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A musical signature appeared in Shostakovich's music in his later career consisting of the notes D, Eb, C and B, which in German spells 'DSCH' - his initials. Its prescence in his music is used as evidence that Shostkaovoch included 'secret messages' in his music, however this is a musical technique used previously by the likes of J.S Bach. it is relatively simple and does not necessarily denote any want for any political message or belief to be spread.

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News Story

With musical notes being represented by letters in many cultures, it is not surprising that composers should be tempted to transcribe their names into music. The majority, however, quickly find themselves hampered by some pretty severe restrictions ...

In the English-speaking world, we can match the first eight letters of the alphabet, A to G, to corresponding musical notes. German speakers have a small advantage in having an extra letter: slightly confusingly, H represents B natural, B itself denoting B flat. On top of this, they use the suffixes -is and -es to indicate sharpened or flattened notes, up and down a semitone respectively. The letters fis can therefore be transcribed to the single note of F sharp, or des to D flat.

JS Bach is far and away the best-known composer to have a recognisable signature along these lines - his surname being transliterated as B flat-A-C-B natural - and made use of it in a number of his works, perhaps most significantly in The Art of Fugue.

The final fugue from Bach's Art of Fugue - the BACH motif is introduced at 6:32.

Another 150 years or so would pass before another composer saw the potential in their musical signature, but there was at least one missed opportunity in this period - from one of Bach's own sons, no less. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach wrote one solitary piece based on the sequence C-F-E-B flat-A-C-B natural (formed by using the Italian form of his second name, Filippo, as part of his initials), but it remained unpublished, suggesting minimal interest on his part. Considering it's one of the better musical signatures out there, with a melodic flow that others can only dream of, it's very tempting to wonder what his father would have made of it.

The possibilities of the (shorter) BACH motif were explored by many 19th century composers, their imaginations sparked by the revival of interest in Bach's music. In more recent times, the same spirit of homage has resulted in the sequence D-E flat-C-B being found in music by Danny Elfman (in his soundtrack for the film Dolores Claiborne) or Chumbawamba's 2009 song Hammer, Stirrup and Anvil, both of which pay tribute to possibly the most important of 20th century Russian composers.

Dmitri Shostakovich used the letters DSCH, i.e. the initial of his first name and the first letters of his surname as written in German (Schostakowitsch) to create his signature, which he then stamped across many of his works. Probably its most devastating use is in his string quartets, the genre for which he reserved some of his most personal outpourings. It becomes particularly significant in his String Quartet No 8 (available as part of our Digital Season for one month from 5 January 2023), where it pervades all four movements.

Present throughout his String Quartet No 8, Shostakovich's DSCH motif is especially prominent in the third movement (from 7:50).

With so many letters of the alphabet being unusable as musical notes, most composers can generally only go so far before shoehorning become inevitable. Arnold Schönberg, for instance, ignored a third of the letters in his surname to come up with E flat-C-B-B flat-E-G; already not the most obvious of sequences, its subsequent designation as the Schoenberg hexachord has hardly helped make it mainstream. In the circumstances, you can't blame the vast majority of composers for having decided a musical signature is more trouble than it's worth.

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The (remarkably small) world of musical signatures | Scottish Chamber Orchestra

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With musical notes being represented by letters in many cultures, it is not surprising that composers should be tempted to transcribe their names into musi

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One of Shostakovich's most evocative and emotional works, as well as one of the most prominent uses of his DSCH signature, it features heavily in discussions surrounding the 'secret dissident' narrative. Especially due to the note on the composition 'dedicated to the victims of Fascism and war', with several arguing that doing so was the only way he could be allowed to release such a bleak and sad work under the 'formalism' rules Soviet composers had to abide by. In reality this work was written at a time of extreme declining health, and more likely served as a funeral note to himself, as evidenced by Shostakovich openly weeping during rehearsals prior to its premiere in the same year.

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Emerson String Quartet: Shostakovich Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110

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Shostakovich is an example of how- in the need to satisfy the needed elevation and glorification of composers in the confines of the Classical Canon- the truth of these people are buried and changed to better appeal to the philosophies and sensibilities of those who shaped the canon. This change in his narrative directly resulted in an increase in popularity in the Western democratic world, as he became more 'acceptable'. What does it mean for the already lofty ideas of musical and artistic genius that even those labelled as such found the goal unobtainable?

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Narratives in the Classical Canon had had a huge impact on the knowledge, performance and perception of western classical music. It serves to perpetuate the elitism, snobbish reputation and exclusionary nature of classical music, and has permeated throughout public consciousness and archives, creating a bias towards certain composers, styles of musicology philosophy. the attached document is an example of the stereotypes surrounding classical music as that written by 'dead white men', discouraging those people from other denominations and backgrounds from engaging or encountering this music.

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The Classical Canon narrative has decided which composers are remembered and immortalised and which aren't. Why certain composers and not others? Why certain styles. Musicologists that helped to cement the Canon philosophies like Adorno wrote about jazz music and other styles in such a dismissive manner as to create a separation that still exists today.

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'We know that jazz can tell us about the oppression caused by racism, but how can it tell us about the oppression caused by capitalism?'Jimmy Baikovicius

An interest in Marx has re-emerged lately, like a spectre haunting Europe. Unlike the ghost which troubled Hamlet, this one is silent; I never hear about the "exploitation of labour" or the "alienation of the worker". I'm sure they're still happening - maybe the fellows at King's can tell me about it.

While waiting for my invitation to a formal dinner at King's, I passed the time by reading about jazz, and discovered that Theodor Adorno thought it was inherently alienating and dehumanising. We know that jazz can tell us about the oppression caused by racism, but how can it tell us about the oppression caused by capitalism?

Writing in the 1930s, Adorno began by denying that jazz had any of the qualities for which it was praised: it was not expressive and spontaneous. Rather, he thought it was essentially formulaic, banal, and - worst of all - fashionable. He granted that the tunes were syncopated, but pointed out that they were played over a rigid beat, always marked by the kick drum. Jazz may have its roots in African music, but any forms of authentic African expression must be attenuated or removed so that the music can be a mass-produced. As Adorno put it, "even yesterday's music must first be rendered harmless by jazz, must be released from its historical element, before it is ready for the market." The improvised solos were merely "a pasted-on ornament" to the "most dismal products of the popular-song industry," meaning Tin Pan Alley, which produced 32-bar songs as if it had an assembly line. Like, say, a piano concerto, jazz was a musical form which claimed it reconciled an individual part (an improvised solo) to a whole (the rest of the song). Adorno rejected this idea as a bourgeois illusion; all tonal music pretends to reconcile part to whole, which cannot happen in the modern world.

A second problem is that, unlike other tonal music, jazz is not "dialectic". In other words, elements do not progress or develop out of one another; they merely occur after one another. (Although, ideally, solos within a jazz track are meant to be variations on the same theme, I find that this is rarely the case, and the better the individual players, the more distinct their solos.) Organic progress and change based on interactions between individuals were integral parts of Adorno's ideal society, and he deplored any art which merely juxtaposed different elements, such as the collages and montages of Dada and Surrealism. A collective, authoritarian society aims to make dialectic impossible because it produces criticism. Thus, without dialectic, jazz was the worst product of the pop music industry; it was a commodity, and commodity destroys all relations between people and all genuine feelings. (Adorno seems not to have known that people in occupied Czechoslovakia used jazz to subvert the authority of the Nazis.)

"In sum, for Adorno jazz was a banal commodity. He thought the differences in jazz tracks were variants on the same old formulas, like the superficial variants on the same factory-produced car"

In sum, for Adorno jazz was a banal commodity. He thought the differences in jazz tracks were variants on the same old formulas, like the superficial variants on the same factory-produced car. He celebrated Schoenberg, whom he thought liberated music from tonality because only the avant-garde could save art from mass-produced kitsch. Jazz developed a branch of avant-garde well before his death in 1969, but Adorno never revised his initial thoughts which stated that jazz was merely a product of the pop music industry.

In fact, jazz began to deviate from popular music in the 1940s, only a few years after Adorno wrote his first article about it. Ralph Ellison spent some time with the jazz musicians of the 40s and reported what he learned in an article published in 1959. He found that most jazz musicians were isolated from their audience: they wanted to play what they called "jazz," which was already very unpopular. Like everyone else, they wanted a decent wage and a steady job, but found that they must please the "squares" (i.e. play pop music) to get one. The choice between playing jazz or having money bred resentment. They hated their audience. They didn't want to look at them or associate with them. A stage provided welcome separation from the audience, and when one wasn't available the musicians erected a barrier made of chairs. They developed a language ("geetz," "gigs") to separate themselves from the rest of society, and quickly discarded it if it became too widely-spread.

For the Marxist, then, isolation seems inevitable. If you play popular music, you're a part of the commodity which is isolating people and chaining their spirits to the capitalist machine. If you play unpopular music, you begin to hate your fellow human beings because they won't pay you to play what they don't want to hear. In every case, a man is isolated and can have no effect on society. Is that why I haven't been invited to King's?

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Exploring the work of Theodor Adorno, William Poulos reflects on the philosophical relationship between Marxism and jazz

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With the Canon composers featuring heavily in most musical programmes, it has an impact on the music that we have access to- composers may have been lost to time that deserved just as much to be appreciated, many more buried under the huge bodies of works written about the more well-known figures. Composers may even now be underperformed because audiences will be more likely to attend a concert of pieces that they know. Classical performers face extreme rigidity of style and inflection as to affect creativity and individualism of performance.

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Ahead of Manchester Collective's debut at the BBC Proms, writer Johnny James explores the outsider voices and stories that feature in this subversive musical programme.
Classical music is made by the few for the few - until we decide it isn't.

The world of professional classical music has, historically, been an exclusive one - made by and for a slim demographic, while outsiders remain just that: outside. But as the world discovers that inclusivity breeds innovation, why should classical music drag its feet? After all, the genre has been in a state of flux since its inception; challenging conventions is part of its DNA.

The same is true of both Manchester Collective and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, whose every step questions pre-conceived notions of what classical music can be. In The Holy Presence, they present a programme of outsiders, taking music that in some way exists in the shadows, and holding it up to the light.

Julius Eastman was a key voice in the story of American minimalism, but his identity as a black and openly gay composer did not easily fit into the musical landscape of the 1960s and '70s. "What I am trying to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest," he said in a 1976 interview. "Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest."

Eastman's dedication to living boldly saw him pushed to the margins of the classical establishment and virtually erased from the pages of 20th century music history. Until now. Eastman's lost scores, which reveal a composer way ahead of his time, have been painstakingly reassembled from recordings, and reinstated into the minimalist canon. Among these works is the raucous masterpiece The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc (1981). Taking rhythms from a punk-rock song by fellow New Yorker Patti Smith, The Holy Presence sees Eastman graft minimalist repetition onto harmonies that lean towards Wagner and Schoenberg - a collision of worlds that had hitherto never met.

"Minimalism was still in its austere, two-dimensional phase, conceptual and concerned with abstract pattern," writes critic and musicologist Kyle Gann in his book of essays Gay Guerrilla, "but in one step Eastman started mixing genres and forecasting techniques that would be tried in Post-Minimalism 15 years hence."

Throughout his compositional life, Eastman had a proclivity for leaving things open to interpretation. While The Holy Presence is scored for 10 cellos, Manchester Collective will present it in the context of a string orchestra, staying true to both the composer's freewheeling ethos and the ensemble's own spirit of exploration.

If Eastman sought freedom in the liminal spaces between musical worlds, then so does Joseph Horovitz, whose 1965 Jazz Concerto for harpsichord, strings, and jazz kit also appears in this programme. As a Jew born in Vienna, living and working in the UK, Horovitz has been similarly overlooked by the classical establishment. And yet here is a composer who brings new audiences into the fold of the genre. By combining traditional jazz language with principles of formal thematic development, the Jazz Concerto extends a hand beyond the classical music world, and invites 'outsiders' in.

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Out of the shadows, into the light - Manchester Collective

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Classical music is made by the few for the few - until we decide it isn't.

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The rigidity and exactness demanded of classical performers and instrumentalists is not only something that effects the creativity of the musician, but also is in direct contrast the the style many of these works were originally performed in. In the name of remaining authentic to the 'composer's intentions' the Canon has thrown real performance authenticity of style and stage away.

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Look lively! Stokkete/Shutterstock

After a very drawn out and fraught construction, the Philharmonie de Paris is finally open. The 2,400 seat concert hall was conceived with ambitious plans to democratise classical music, and is situated, in line with these aims, on the boundary between the city's affluent centre and its banlieues. Whether it will succeed in these ambitions remains to be seen.

Classical music has always been the music of the educated classes, but today, despite the much more equal distribution of education in first world society, it is seen by many as stuffy, irrelevant and unappealing. The term "classical music" - coined in the 19th century to describe material that had been judged worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of great art - is now used somewhat misleadingly to apply to everything that might be performed in a concert hall or opera house, rather than in more informal venues. The old assumption that "classical" music has more cultural value than "popular" music is no longer orthodox - it has become one genre amongst many.

Current performance conditions do little to help this - tickets to opera theatres and concert halls, where the audience listens in unbroken silence, are generally expensive, and performers adhere conscientiously, yet often uninspiringly, to the notation in the score. But it wasn't always like this. Performers of the past approached their task much more like popular musicians today, and this shift in style has almost certainly contributed to classical music's lacking appeal to much of the population.

The popstars of the 1800s

A major factor in the diminished popularity of classical music is the failure of modern performers fully to understand what the musical notation of the past was expected to convey to them. Pre-20th century musicians approached performance much more like popular musicians still do. For them, it was more fluid, more personal - composers expected them to understand the hidden messages behind the notes. Even in the great music of the late 19th century such as that of Brahms, options in performance were hinted at rather than prescribed. The notation was merely a starting point - a great performer was expected to go beyond it.

But classical performance has lost much of the improvisatory element that was an essential part of its original character. This has resulted in a stiffly formal distortion of what the greatest composers and performers of the past expected.

The old musicians understood that there were many aspects of an effective and engaging performance that could not be embodied in the score. Tempo was often expected to be more flexible. Rhythms could be bent in a manner we still hear in jazz and other types of popular music. Notes weren't always be taken cleanly, but often approached with various kinds of slides and tonal inflections. Vibrato was an ornamental effect rather than a continuous and regular oscillation of the sound. Parts that are notated vertically together in the score, were frequently expected not to be together in performance. In keyboard playing, chords that appear to be vertically together were mostly performed with various degrees of spreading.

These are just a few of the ways that musicians built on the raw notation in order to turn a merely correct performance into a fine one, making concerts much more exciting and vibrant events. But these practices were gradually eliminated in the early 20th century.

Classical musicians increasingly equated fidelity to the composer's "intentions" with reproducing - to paraphrase a well-know judicial phrase - "the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text". This transformation partly reflected the ideals of modernism, in which the rejection of the past was a first principle, but it may also have been motivated by a desire to distance "culturally superior" classical music from the popular styles in which these freedoms were retained.

Formal, rigid, unemotional

Already in the 1930s, voices were raised against this growing prioritisation of the literal meaning of the notation. In 1933 a reviewer in The Musical Times criticised rhythmic rigidity in a performance of Brahms's Violin Sonata op. 78, complaining that it ran contrary to the composer's tradition. And, with regard to another performance, the same writer, after remarking that it "pleased by its modest competence", continued:

Neat as to technique, the players had so eliminated all superfluity from their performance that their Mozart sonata struck one as less interesting than they or it deserved to be.

But such mild admonitions failed to prevent classical performers from renouncing their old freedoms, in the misguided belief that the music on the page contained virtually everything the composer expected. So it is hardly surprising that many genuinely musical people are now deterred from engaging with classical music by a perception that it is formal, rigid, and lacking in emotional vitality.

As yet, few professional musicians have begun seriously to experiment with responding to the messages that lie behind the notes on the page as their predecessors did. But this core repertoire of great music must now be recreated in ways that return it to its quasi-improvisatory roots. It needs more than family friendly, state-of-the-art concert halls with innovative programming - though this is a good start.

If classical music is to regain its cultural significance, musicians must engage with it more courageously, learning once more to read between the lines of the score. Only then will they recapture the full measure of freshness, beauty and excitement that composers expected their notation to convey to skillful performers and, through them, to the listener.

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We're playing classical music all wrong - composers wanted us to improvise

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After a very drawn out and fraught construction, the Philharmonie de Paris is finally open. The 2,400 seat concert hall was conceived with ambitious plans to democratise classical music, and is situated...

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The dubious and problematic ideas perpetuated by the Classical Canon is one that impacts how we view classical music, both layman and professional. We must think of what we see what or who we see and not someone else. Who has decided what is 'acceptable' and what is not? Why might people have certain views about certain styles of music and composers? How might we tackle these ideas and perceive how they might have shaped our mindset and opinions? Everyone should be able to appreciate any art or music that speaks to them, that they enjoy, regardless of whether it is 'for them' or not. That is the nature of music and art.

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Public Resources; Resources of Underrepresented Composers; Beginner Resources; Copyright Resources; Librarians on Performance Librarianship

A free collection highlighting the role of Black music in world culture with materials originating or representing Black music in the United States, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean in a variety of formats: personal papers, scores, sheet music, audio-visual materials, photographs, books, periodicals, and commercial recordings.

Its mission is to inspire Black students to begin and continue instrumental training, make the music of Black composers available to everyone, and help to change the face of classical music through greater diversity.

Developed by composer Rob Deemer and housed at SUNY Fredonia, this database allows users to browse over 4000 composers of historically underrepresented racial, ethnic, and cultural heritages; genders; and sexual orientations. You can search by composer name, living or deceased; composer demographics; common genres for both large and small ensembles; and location (city, state, country).

This list from 2018 includes the names and websites of composers identifying as women, gender non-conforming, and ALAANA (African/Black, Latinx, Asian/South Asian, Arab/Middle Eastern, and Native American).

This online, subscription-based catalog contains over 9,000 original orchestral works by over 1,600 composers from 24 countries and territories of Latin America and the Caribbean. The database offers a free trial for 30 days, and then a modest annual fee for continued access.

A compilation of original works by composers in the African Diaspora, researched and owned by Dr. Louise Toppin and Videmus.

A growing list of great composers, with the mission of encouraging diversity on the concert stage and providing easy access to information for music directors and artistic administrators.

BIPOC Voices is a resource to help program works for solo voice(s) and instruments by composers who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.

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Databases of Repertoire by Underrepresented Composers - americanorchestras.org

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Center for Black Music Research; Music by Black Composers, a Project of the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation; Composer Diversity Database; Composer's Equity Project; Latin Orchestral Music

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Healing the gap between classical and jazz

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Healing the gap between classical and jazz

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Classical Jazz Fusion blends the rich harmonies and improvisational elements of jazz with the formal structure and instrumentation of classical music. Expect to hear intricate melodies and rhythms, complex chord progressions, and virtuosic solos from both the jazz and classical traditions.

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Classical Jazz Fusion artists and listeners - Musicalyst

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Top artists and listeners for Classical Jazz Fusion music on Spotify. Featuring Eugen Cicero, Jacques Loussier Trio, Klazz Brothers.

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As orchestras strive for greater inclusion, it’s time to finally let go of the notion of a classical music “canon”

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25 Black musicians who have shaped the classical music world

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We celebrate some of the most influential Black voices the classical music world has known.