To Be in Time: Repetition, Temporality, and the Musical Work

This chapter begins by examining recent scholarship in ‘music as performance’, especially that of Nicholas Cook, and its implications for the work concept. By exploring various formulations of the work concept from a temporal perspective, it becomes clear that contradictions occur whenever the work concept is tied too closely to the notion of a musical work’s identity. Instead, a Deleuzian understanding of the musical work is advanced, based on Deleuze’s idea of repetition: this is seen as allying closely with a deconstructive approach to musical material, which provides an additional opportunity to consider musical temporality, in the arena of history and the musical past. Finally, to recapture the spirit of Cook’s original theories, and drawing on Hannah Arendt, a parallel between musical and human ontology is drawn, based on their identical interaction with time, which reconstitutes but fundamentally changes the idea of (the) musical ‘work’.

Humans or Machines? Scientific Determinism within the Context of Yoruba Human Ontology

Freewill has been a subject of intense study in the history of philosophy, this revolves around the debate that are humans free or are their actions determined? While there has been a lot of questions on the nature of human will, the search for answers remains relevant in contemporary studies as seen in the entrance of neuroscience to this quest. Neuroscience, in the study of the human will arrived at a conclusion based on empirical studies that freewill is an illusion because the human will is determined by cerebral activities. The discovery in the field of neuroscience therefore challenges the traditional belief about freewill and our beliefs that humans are in full control of their will. This submission indicated that human decisions for actions were initiated before humans became aware of them, that is, likening humans to machines, thereby creating a lacuna especially within the Yoruba religious and cultural contexts. This study therefore, interrogated the position of neuroscience on the human will by focusing on how scientific determinism can be viewed from the Yoruba worldview. Scientific determinism evident in the field of neuroscience was examined with a view to situating the findings of neuroscience on human will within the context of Yoruba human ontology.

Early (Avant-garde) Symphonies by Valentin Silvestrov As a Sound Universe

"In the article under consideration are the ways of symphony genre transformation in the early works of Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine). For the first time, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth symphonies by the genius composers of the 20th century are analyzed as a certain stylistic system. These compositions are endowed with the features of avant-garde poetics, and as a subject of musicological reflection, they are associated with a rethinking of the semantic paradigm of the genre. V. Silvestrov's early symphonies stand out from the classical practice of European symphonies. Scientific awareness of their phenomenal nature necessitated a methodological choice aimed at the most accurate identification of the philosophical concept of the new sound universum of V. Silvestrov's music. Deep correlation of the image of a human being as a factor of the symphony poetics (the influence of philosophical concepts of human ontology in the 20th century with the transformation of the genre canon) is considered. This refers to the nonmusical dimension of the genre semantics. The study of V. Silvestrov's early symphonies reveal a new philosophy of music through gradual movement – modulation: from the neo-baroque First Symphony and ""cosmic pastorals"" Musica Mundana of the Second Symphony through the history anthropologisation in the Third Symphony ""Eschatology"" to the monodrama Musica Humana in the Fourth Symphony. The dichotomy of Musica Mundana – Musica Humana is not accidental: in V. Silvestrov's creative method, remains relevant, which is confirmed by the dramaturgy of his latest work – the Ninth symphony (2019). Keywords: V. Silvestrov's early symphonies, evolution of style, worldview, Musica Mundana, monodrama. "

Covid-19, Philosophy and the Leap Towards the Posthuman

A discursive canon around transhumanism and posthumanism as beliefs in the efficacy and necessity of technology as the beneficial transformer of human life “for the better” is well-established in the Western philosophical tradition. However, none of the theorists and protagonists of this technological reconfiguration of humanity could ever have predicted that what they envisaged would be propelled into manifestation with as dramatic and phenomenal momentum such as has been ushered in by the mainly technology-driven interventions introduced in various measures globally to curb the SARS-CoV2 virus. The effect of these responses to the pandemic, it is here demonstrated, have set humanity into a technogenesis, a transformative ontological process headed towards a machinistic and de-anthropic life idealised by posthumanists. Apropos, a set of three intertwined tasks are here executed. Firstly, I explicate my foregoing claim, namely, how at the helm of the variety of measures to control Covid-19 is a discernible socio-scientific movement that is directed at inaugurating and regularising a posthumanist consciousness and de-anthropic modes of sociality. Secondly, I venture a critical understanding of “the Covid-19 moment” that exposes the quadripartite alliance of a postmodernist Western philosophy, technoscience, commercial interests, and politics as the systemic drivers of this technocratic philosophical anthropology. Thirdly, or rather concurrently, taking the work of Nick Bostrom as the theoretical heuristic advocating human technological transformation, I normatively alert of the ramifications of this emerging human ontology.

Anthropology, Affections, and Free Will

This chapter explores Edwards’s theological anthropology from the perspective of his psychological understanding of the person, where the human intellect and volition reflect and participate in the Word–Spirit unity, distinction, and ordering in God. Special attention is paid to his idealist and dynamic human ontology, which rejects substance as its underlying reality. Yet, it is argued that Edwards’s particular versions of determinism and occasionalism, where the will is bound by causes though humans are not efficient causes, do not undermine his compatibilist account of free will. Under consideration are the critical roles the intellect and body play in the natural affections and the way in which true freedom coincides with the theocentric and integral nature of the religious affections. The chapter concludes with a description of Edwards’s embodied, dynamic, and relational dimensions of eschatological humanity.

The Ecopoetics of Reparation: Energy, Air and Cosmos in Marie Darrieussecq’s Tom est mort

This article establishes that reparation from grief is a process of “working through” trauma in which death is a catalyst for a re-imagination of the human form. “Working through” trauma comes about in different ways in Tom est mort. It manifests itself firstly as a process “outside” Judeo-Christian and socio-cultural signifiers and outside traditional limits of cognition and subjectivity. Darrieussecq views reparation as a process of nonanthropocentric and anthropogenic relationality (with other species and other non-human phenomena) in which new coalitions and affinities offer an alternative post-human ontology founded in the reduction and dissolution of human form into atoms and particles. Secondly, reparation finds an ecopoetic continuity and sustainability in the narrator’s proximity to and approximation with the physics and spherical production of motion (energy, air, cosmos) and the reparative possibilities posed by this physics to traditional, psychic forms of communication. Darrieussecq’s vision is the hidden energy that operates in space around us. It is a knowledge of the hidden that comes from an acknowledgement of human redundancy in the face of the planet’s eco-vitality.

Posthuman Folklore

Posthuman Folklore explores how our human condition is increasingly thought of, and performed, in posthuman terms. Insights from animal studies have triggered the “animal turn” in scholarship, while the increasing digitization of human culture and the newly emerging roles of androids and artificial intelligences provide yet another crux for reconsidering what it means to be a person. Taken together, such outlooks cast in doubt the previous assurances of human ontology which were lodged in Western discourse. This book explores not only the scholarship behind such moves, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the ways in which everyday people are increasingly enacting posthumanism in their everyday lives. The book follows a narrative thread of various case studies ranging from the pre-hominid to the cyborg, and ends with a futurist appraisal of current trajectories.