The Sound of Subjectivity: On the Actuality of Hegel’s Music

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Professor of Philosophy, University of Dundee, United Kingdom.

10.22034/jpiut.2025.70908.4385

Abstract

This article offers a philosophical analysis of G. W. F. Hegel’s conception of music as articulated in his lectures on aesthetics, with a focus on music’s unique ontological and speculative status within absolute spirit. It argues that, for Hegel, art functions as a practice of truth by supplementing empirical reality through productive semblance (Schein). Rather than representing reality, art condenses it in a way that renders its constitutive principles intelligible. Music realizes this function in its most radical form. The study demonstrates that Hegel understands music as the paradigmatic romantic art, distinguished by the negation of spatial objectivity and the primacy of intensity, vibration, and interiority. By abolishing stable external form, music transforms sensuous material into oscillation and movement. Central to this transformation is the speculative concept of Ton, which unites sound, tone, and materiality. Ton exists only insofar as it vanishes, giving music the structure of a double negation through which being appears as trembling and persistence in dissolution. Moreover, the article shows that music produces a distinctive temporal order by interrupting homogeneous duration through rhythm and cadence. This interruption renders time structured and countable, enabling the emergence of subjectivity as self-relation rather than substance. Finally, it is argued that music occupies a privileged position within absolute spirit because it makes audible the immanence of subjectivity and the inner movement of thought itself. By rendering disappearance perceptible, music provides a non-representational yet rigorous access to the truth of subjectivity and temporality.

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References

Badiou, A. (2009). Theory of the subject (B. Bosteels, Trans.). Continuum.
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Comay, R., & Ruda, F. (2025). On gaps: Is there a politics of absolute knowing? Hegel Bulletin, Advance online publication, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/hgl.2025.8
Hegel, G. W. F. (1986). Vorlesungen über Ästhetik (Vols. 1–3). Suhrkamp.
(Original lectures delivered 1820s)
Hegel, G. W. F. (1988). Aesthetics: Lectures on fine art (T. M. Knox, Trans., Vols. 1–3). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1820s)
Hegel, G. W. F. (2004). Philosophie der Kunst: Vorlesung von 1826. Suhrkamp.
Hegel, G. W. F. (2007). Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst. Felix Meiner Verlag.
Jaeschke, W. (Ed.). (2010). Hegel-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Schule. J. B. Metzler.
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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 19, Issue 53 - Serial Number 53
Articles
Issue 53, Winter 2026
December 2025
Pages 59-70

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