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Theory, Culture & Society
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DOI: 10.1177/0263276415576218

Gould on Hermeneutics tcs.sagepub.com

and Music
Cynthia Lins Hamlin
Federal University of Pernambuco

Abstract
This paper explores the meaning of interpretation in the works of Hans-Georg
Gadamer and Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist and intellectual. As a performing
art, music illustrates the cognitive and practical dimensions of interpretation. While
emphasizing the pre-interpreted character of musical reception and performance,
both authors point to the fact that difference, alterity, and negativity lie at the heart
of creative interpretation, cultivation and self-knowledge. The notion of ecstasy,
understood as a type of self-forgetfulness that represents a radical form of encounter
with alterity, provides the basis for a conception of subjectivity as grounded on
linguistic, historical and cultural conditions, albeit not reducible to them. I maintain
that the notion of ecstatic subjects is a powerful alternative to both the self-centred
notion of subjectivity and its anti-humanistic counterpart in accounting for human
agency.

Keywords
ecstasy, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Glenn Gould, hermeneutics, music, subjectivity

Introduction
It is well known that Gadamerian hermeneutics represents an alternative
to the epistemology-centred philosophy of consciousness that has char-
acterized most conceptions of the subject in the human sciences. What is
perhaps less emphasized is that his theory of interpretation also supports
a dialogical conception of the subject that underlines the centrality of
human practices for the construction of subjectivity. The possibility of
invoking a notion of subjectivity without returning to the so-called meta-
physics of the subject is a promising move for social theorists who wish to
avoid equally problematic conceptions of the human agent: as

Corresponding author: Cynthia Lins Hamlin. Email: cynthiahamlin@hotmail.com

Extra material: http://theoryculturesociety.org/
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2 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

autonomous, rational and ahistorical, on the one hand, or as completely

determined by their circumstances, on the other. This is what I want to
explore here. But Gadamers position on this issue is neither self-evident
nor entirely consistent throughout his work, which probably explains the
variety of interpretations it has received: from an identication between
hermeneutics search for truth and the project of metaphysics (Swartz
and Cilliers, 2003; Gadamer, 2007) to a form of nihilistic anti-humanism
associated with Nietzsche and the later Heidegger (Vattimo, 1992;
Grondin, 2005). Borrowing Patricia Huntingtons notion of ecstatic sub-
jects, I argue instead that Gadamer oers a culturally, historically and
linguistically embedded conception of subjectivity (Huntington, 1998)
that does not reduce the subject to any of these elements. In establishing
that hermeneutic experience begins with an encounter with dierence and
alterity whose radicality depends on self-forgetfulness or ecstasy,
Gadamers ontology of the subject denies self-containment or self-trans-
parency while allowing for the possibility of consciousness, reexivity
and thus initiative in human agency.
In order to develop this argument, I will give particular attention to
Gadamers aesthetics by means of a dialogue of sorts with another
master of the art of interpretation, the Canadian pianist, composer and
intellectual Glenn Gould (19321982), whose aesthetics centres precisely
in the concept of ecstasy, a being outside oneself that represents the
most radical form of involvement with Otherness. Gould was not only a
virtuoso with great technical ability, but also reected deeply about his
artistic practices (Said, 2000). Known for his original interpretations, his
eclectic repertoire and his piano transcriptions, he was a prolic writer
who believed that some thoughts were better realized at the keyboard of
a typewriter than at that of a piano (Page, 1984: xiv). In addition to
many articles and over 80 recordings, his legacy includes a series of radio
and television programmes which, taken together, reveal what Georey
Payzant (1992) calls characteristically Gouldian themes: solitude,
ecstasy, the concerto as a kind of game, the non-reproducibility of per-
formances and technology. I would add both the importance of negativ-
ity in creativity and the tactile or corporeal dimension of interpretation.
There are some reasons for establishing this conversation, a dia-
logical form favoured by Gadamer himself. Firstly, there is the topic of
the conversation: art. According to Gadamer (2006a: 57), the arts, taken
as a whole, quietly govern the metaphysical heritage of our Western
tradition, and it is no accident that his model of interpretation is
(partly) taken from the performative arts (see also Gadamer, 2006b).
In this sense, Goulds reections on music the performative art par
excellence provide some important insights into that which his inter-
pretations are about (die Sache) or, put dierently, a way of regrounding
philosophy in the lived world (Ross, 2006: 103). Secondly, both authors
have as a starting point a critique of subjectivism as developed by the
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Hamlin 3

Romantic tradition. However, dierently from Gadamer, whose philoso-

phy is an interpretation of interpretation, a prolonged meditation upon
what happens to us within hermeneutic experience (Davey, 2006: 1),
Goulds interpretations are also a form of (bodily) practice, thus com-
plementing an aspect that was only mentioned by Gadamer. In fact, it
could be argued that while Gadamer focuses on the experience of the
reception of art, Gould emphasizes its performance, a notion more dir-
ectly linked to reexivity and to bodily practice. However, given the
universality of Gadamers hermeneutics, it encompasses all forms and
instances of interpretation, including performances. In this sense, this
dierence should not hinder dialogue. Last but not least, Gadamers
discussion of the performing arts is rather abstract. In Goulds reec-
tions, particularly given the concrete character of his examples, one can
fully appreciate the importance of ecstasy in the relationship between
practice and self-knowledge, even though this relationship is better for-
mulated in hermeneutical terms.

Hermeneutics, Practice and Experience

Gadamers hermeneutics is largely a reection on the limits of sciences
understanding of human existence. In this respect, it is a continuation of
the critique of reason begun by German romanticism and idealism
albeit one that attempts to exceed its subjectivist tendencies and their
incorporation by the interpretative human sciences. Instead of reducing
hermeneutics to a method for the apprehension of subjective meanings,
Gadamer (2007: 71) conceives it as a theory of the praxis of
understanding.
According to this approach, understanding (Verstehen) is both a cog-
nitive and practical ability. Someone who understands something is
someone well versed in something, someone capable of recognizing it.
One can understand a text (interpret it, perceive connections between
ideas, draw conclusions from it), the functioning of a machine (know
how to operate it), or a trade (know how to perform it). These forms of
understanding are also forms of self-understanding, a projecting of ones
possibilities, a knowing ones way around (Gadamer, 2006b: 25051).
In its ideal form, Gadamers notion of praxis is akin to Aristotles
phronesis, something closer to the modern idea of wisdom than of know-
ledge: a type of practical (as opposed to theoretical) knowledge directed
to concrete life-situations, a kind of performance in the ethical conduct of
human beings. The rationality that characterizes phronesis is dierent
from what is known as judgement and does not aim to subsume par-
ticular cases into universal categories, as in the logico-deductive applica-
tion of a universal rule, but relates them to moral principles so that the
right thing might result. In this sense, it is intrinsically linked to the
values of a given community. Phronesis cannot be taught; it is something
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that is acquired in a lifetime as cultivation (Bildung). As a moral virtue, it

always requires self-deliberation and responsibility for ones own aims
(Gadamer, 1996: 48). Because practical rules, once mastered, become
part of who we are, practical knowledge presents a reexive form, i.e.
it is also self-knowledge (Habermas, 1968: 150).
Despite its ideal form, phronesis is never a complete knowledge
because understanding itself can never be nal. Understanding depends
on notions of experience that cannot be reduced to the experiences that
occupy science, i.e. a stock of experimental knowledge separated from
personal experience that aims for particular ends where validity depends
upon conrmation and so repeatability. In contrast, Gadamer speaks of
hermeneutic experience in two dierent senses: Erlebnis (lived experience)
and Erfahrung a Hegelian concept strictly associated with the notion of
Bildung. Both refer to participation in concrete situations singular,
historical, non-repeatable and to the fact that what we learn from
them only counts as experience when integrated into the practical con-
sciousness of active human beings (Gadamer, 1996: 2). The dierence
between them, and the largely negative sense that Gadamer attibutes to
Erlebnis, becomes clear in his critique of Diltheys speculative idealism:
Erlebnis is clearly associated with an epistemological project in which
meaning refers to an attitude or subjective faculty. This subjectivist
approach to understanding tends to focus on experience as self-reected
in the subjects mind, conceived as a self-sucient entity that relates to
the objects of the world through internal mental states that in some way
represent, but do not depend upon, those objects. At least since
Descartes, this conception has allowed the subject to function as the
stable element that provides the rm foundation of method (Gadamer,
2000; Dreyfus, 2004). Hermeneutic experience and understanding are,
instead, related to a phenomenological approach where the focus is on
the objects experienced on that which is given in experience (die Sache).
In phenomenological language, Gadamer is interested in a form of exist-
ential self-understanding (Palmer, 2006: 1) or in understanding as a
mode-of-being of Dasein, a being-in-movement whose very instability
and lack of self-transparency cannot provide the foundation of the
idea of certainty that characterizes method. Hermeneutics thus appears
as ontology, not as method. Human beings are a type of being whose
existence is a problem to themselves and, in their endless attempts at
self-understanding, they constantly modify themselves. In this way,
experience and understanding can be seen as something that organizes
subjectivity, rather than its eects.
Gadamer distinguishes between two types of experiences: those that
conform to our expectations, conrming them, and new experiences that
happen. Only the latter can be called true experiences because only
something dierent and unexpected can provide someone who has
experience with a new one (Gadamer, 2006b: 348). True experiences
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are dialectical; they generate not only knowledge of the world, but of
ourselves. This is the core of the notion of hermeneutic experience: an
event, something that addresses us and promotes an encounter with
dierence, alterity, Otherness and, at the limit, with ourselves.
Together with historical and linguistic experience, the experience of
works of art is highly suitable for understanding the mode of being of
those who undergo such experience. I will illustrate this by focusing on
one type of aesthetic experience: music. As suggested above, my general
aim is to reect on the possibility of a conception of the human subject as
a type of being that, even though it acts on the basis of self-interpreta-
tion, is not based on an epistemology that treats self-knowledge as a
simple becoming of an object to itself. This does not involve refusing
the epistemological project in its entirety, neither does it imply a radical
discrediting of the metaphysics of the subject that might make the Other
disappear along with any possibility of understanding (Gadamer, 2000:
286). Contrary to these movements adopted by the later Heidegger, if the
social sciences are to make any sense, we need an ontology and theory of
knowledge that maintains a conception of the subjective or the per-
sonal1 albeit one that does not have epistemic primacy because it
cannot be considered the substance of all of our ideas (Gadamer,
2000: 277).

Ecstasy and Artistic Experience: The Critique of

Romanticism
Both for Gadamer and Gould, the notion of ecstasy can be interpreted as
the most perfect form of encounter with something that has the power to
generate new experience and (self) knowledge, the work of art. Ecstasy
refers to self-forgetfulness, a being outside of oneself (from the Greek: ex,
outside; stasis, movement) that, according to Gould (1984: 254), consti-
tutes the only legitimate quest of the artist. Even though Gould does not
strictly dene ecstasy and often uses the term in the sense of introspec-
tion, an attentive reading of his work shows that central to the concept is
a transcendence of the self through an integral attentiveness to the struc-
ture of a piece of music. This generates a sense of unity between the work
and the self, which contributes to the realization of the true aim of art:
the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity
(1984: 246).
Ecstasy is, according to Gould, increasingly dicult to attain in the
contemporary classical music scene because of a process of change begin-
ning with the romantic concerto and its emphasis on the virtuoso. For
him, much romantic music distinguishes between an objective phenom-
enon and the psychological response which it presupposes a distinction
that represents the last stand of a world determined to circumvent what
it conceived of as the limits of quantication (1984: 76). In more
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philosophical language, Gould refers to the critique of reason by the

Romantic Movement, which implied a decentring of epistemology in
favour of aesthetics. The emphasis was less on the notion of rationality
than on intuition, sensibility and freedom. But what is presupposed in
Goulds critique is that this decentring was achieved at the cost of an
excessive valorization of subjective elements to the detriment of what he
calls the structure or the backbone of the work and was part of a
process of social dierentiation that started in the 18th century, when
the composer, the performer and the audience split and became sepa-
rated (Gould apud Monsaingeon, 1974).
As noted by Said (2000), this was the period of the ascendency of the
bourgeoisie, who began to have access to something previously restricted
to the salons of the courts, churches and private states. The substitution
of these spaces by increasingly secular and autonomous ones, such as
concert halls, parks and theatres, was partly facilitated by the techno-
logical development of musical instruments, making them more potent
for larger spaces. The result was the musicians reliance on a middle-class
paying public, and no longer on the patronage of a wealthy monarch or
courtesan. At the same time, the appearance of virtuoso gures such as
Liszt or Paganini, more admired for their demonic performances on stage
than for their compositions, contributed to the separation of the com-
poser and the performer.
The structure of music also changed, particularly the structure of the
concerto, which became the most popular musical form. In A History of
the Concerto, Thomas Roeder (1994: 199) shows the parallel between a
growing individualism and the ascendance of the centrality of the virtu-
oso. An almost continuous brilliant solo contrasting with a generally
subjugated orchestra replaced the previous tension between orchestra
and soloist; slower movements, unsuitable as vehicles of virtuosic
exhibition, became shorter, serving as introductions to fast, grandiose
nales. Taken together, these elements completely changed the concert
experience, making it deeply antithetical to the experience of ecstasy.
This process was further deepened in the following century, becoming
increasingly discontinuous with everyday life and entirely connected to
the competitive world of other performers, ticket-sellers, agents, intend-
ants, and impresarios, as well as the even more controlling record and
media company executives (Said, 2000: 4).
Gould opposes the virtuoso-cult in many ways, for example in his
critique of programmes that revitalize the virtuoso-cult through the
inclusion of works such as Franz Liszts perennially fascinating, if per-
petually unsatisfying, First Piano Concerto (Gould, 1984: 73). But per-
haps a more radical criticism comes in the form of his 1962 very
unorthodox performance of Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1, conducted
by Leonard Bernstein. Here, he downplays all contrasts generally empha-
sized in the romantic concertos by changing tempos, bypassing dramatic
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emphasis and avoiding certain traditional accents that substantiate the

outrageous ego of the soloist. All this as an attempt to subordinate the
soloists role, not to aggrandize it to integrate rather than to isolate
(1984: 71). Gould views this interpretation as a particular revelation of
certain aspects and possibilities of the work itself, and this suggests that
what is at stake in interpretation is not an alleged authenticity but the
revelation of what was obscured by previous interpretations. It is pre-
cisely this kind of dierence that is not valued in public exhibitions,
making Gould refer to them as a form of blood sport whose ends
have nothing to do with cultivation or (self) formation. In order to
escape this, he retired, aged 32, at the height of his career. Until his
death, in 1981, he dedicated himself to a sort of ecstasy production at
a distance, attempting to remedy what Adorno refers to as alienation and
regression of listening by substituting the concert hall with the cultural
industry itself.
Gadamer expresses a similar concern with alienation, particularly in
his depiction of the 19th-century museum as isolating the work of art
from its context, turning it into an aesthetic object (Gadamer, 2006b).
However, his main concern is to depict the experience of the work of art
as a paradigmatic case of hermeneutic experience. So, instead of viewing
contemporary art as a competitive game, as Gould does, he links the
general experience of art with the notion of play. Play represents
Gadamers attempt to avoid not only the centrality accorded to the sub-
ject in the interpretation of art works and cultural products, but the very
subject-object distinction as the basis for understanding.2
The basis of his critique of this distinction lies in Kants aesthetics.
Kant focused on the feeling of pleasure induced by a work of art,
excluding this kind of phenomena from the realm of knowledge and
thus of reason. Gadamer refers to this tradition in terms of aesthetic
consciousness, or the idea according to which aesthetics is associated
with the realm of pure freedom and indetermination. Accordingly, a
judgement such as X is beautiful refers not to the properties of the
object, but merely to a disinterested pleasure generated by the free
play and combination of our cognitive powers, imagination and
understanding (Gjsedal, 2009). Gadamer argues, however, that in
this very tradition one can identify the possibility of conceiving art
as an expression of the ideals of reason, though not scientic reason.
In The Relevance of the Beautiful (1986: 16) he argues that we can only
speak of knowledge proper when we cease to be determined by the
subjective and the sensible and come to grasp the universal, the regu-
larity in things. It was Kant who provided the foundation for thinking
about knowledge and truth on the basis of a type of experience (of the
beautiful) that, despite not being universal, does make a binding
claim. Because it can be shared it cannot be conceived as mere sub-
jective taste, but to something whose validity is not just subjective:
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8 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

common sense as represented by tradition, i.e. to shared meanings that

can be communicated.
By placing aesthetics rmly within the realm of hermeneutics,
Gadamer (2007: 160) treats it as paradigmatic of the fact that things
produced by the human mind cannot be understood in terms of a sub-
jects relation to some object. Instead, understanding the cultural realm
involves an encounter with tradition and its vehicle language. Arts
paradigmatic stance also has to do with its close association with
praxis or phronesis by challenging the very idea that knowledge is only
subsumptive and law-oriented (Gjsedal, 2009: 16). The knowledge gen-
erated by the experience of the work of art is also reective, but given
that this experience is often of shock or surprise, it refers to a true (i.e.
negative) experience: precisely an eect of strangeness is able to trigger
its own power to attract, which leads to the viewers appropriation
(Gadamer, 2007: 199). It is this relation between attraction and appro-
priation that is expressed in the notion of ecstasy, suggesting that ecstatic
self-forgetfulness involves not being transported away, but a sort of
return to tradition.
In contrast to Gould, for whom ecstasy constitutes the core of his
aesthetics, Gadamer mentions it as part of his denition of play.
Explicitly linking ecstasy to the idea of participation in the presentation
of a work contrasts it with scientic rationalitys remote relation to its
objects. Ecstasy presupposes not distance, but being present in deep
involvement, being carried away in play:

Considered as a subjective accomplishment in human conduct,

being present has the character of being outside oneself . . . In
fact, being outside oneself is the positive possibility of being
wholly with something else. This kind of being present is a self-
forgetfulness, and to be a spectator consists in giving oneself in
self-forgetfulness to what one is watching. Here self-forgetfulness
is anything but a private condition, for it arises from devoting ones
full attention to the matter at hand, and this is the spectators own
positive accomplishment. (Gadamer, 2006b: 122)

By denying the subjectivism that underlies the concept of aesthetic con-

sciousness, Gadamer wants to highlight the passive rather than active
participation of the spectator (pathos). However, such passivity is not
simply negative, for ecstasy refers to the opposite of apathy insofar as
it implies a being interested in, an intense attention or complete involve-
ment with something. Even though this idea of a positive passivity
viewed as a subjective accomplishment in human conduct might sug-
gest a relationship of continuity with Husserls subject/object scheme and
its concept of intentionality,3 Gadamers concept of play establishes how
this intentionality manifests itself.
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Hamlin 9

Like ecstasy, play (Spiel) refers to a non-separation between subject

and object in a given practice. It is conceived as a structure or a pattern
that renews itself in constant repetition. It is spontaneous (in the sense of
non-determined) and moved by free impulse (in the sense that it has no
end outside itself). This concept originates with Kant and the romantic
tradition, but the way Gadamer appropriates it denies the subjective
meaning it has in Kant and Schiller (Gadamer, 2006b: 102). What is
this subjective meaning? Precisely the idea of freedom that is deeply
associated with the so-called aesthetics of genius. This idea partly
derives from a non-teleological and autopoietic conception of nature
favoured by romanticism. In a typically romantic formulation, Kant
described the genius as a favourite of nature who thereby, like nature,
creates something that seems as though it were made in accordance with
rules, although without conscious attention to them (Gadamer, 1986:
21). Indeed, romantic conceptions of the subject are united by the dis-
tinctive characteristic of no longer being dened by rational control.
Instead, they are dened in terms of a power that refers to creative
imagination and to expressive self-articulation. This expressivism also
involves a radicalization of subjectivism and the increasing depth of a
subject who, even though intrinsically related to nature, only has access
to it by means of the self-examination of its interiority (Taylor, 1989).
This is highlighted in Schillers concept of play, an aesthetic category that
marks a deep contrast with the earnest theoretical science and practical
action:

In play the subject was to be involved with himself alone and, so to

say, freed from the pressures that assailed him in science and in
ethics. For Schiller the autonomy of the aesthetic was grounded
on this free play of the subject within himself. Only in the aesthetic
was the subject actually free, i.e., free from the rules of knowing and
acting. (Grondin, 2001: 43)

Gadamers opposition to this romantic claim rests upon a conception

of the subject that is restricted to itself and free of cognitive and practical
horizons. For him, the opposite of play is not the seriousness of science
and ethics to which Schiller refers, but non-participation, non-involve-
ment. Involvement is not restricted to the players, but extends to spec-
tators. Play is a communicative activity and, as such, it does not allow a
strict separation between players and observers both participate.
Participation is dened as an inner sharing of the repetitive movement,
a going along with it. It is intentional, in the sense that something (the
repetition, for instance) is intended as something, even if it is not con-
ceptual, useful or purposive (Gadamer, 1986: 24). In this sense, Gadamer
sometimes speaks of the intentionality of play, of playing as being
played, and that the subject of the play is not the player but the play
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10 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

itself (Gadamer, 2006b: 106). From a subjective perspective, intentional-

ity appears merely as a disinterested interest, something that is mean-
ingful for us (the opposite of apathy) but not something that we try to
appropriate in order to dispose and control, or something that has a use
or a purpose. This form of intentionality involves rationality, but not an
end-oriented one. In fact, while representing an extreme form of involve-
ment, the type of knowledge aorded by ecstatic experiences cannot be
acquired or possessed. It is not something one can control, but is parti-
cipated in as one goes along with it; we are possessed by it (Palmer,
1969: 169).
The displacement of subjectivity aorded by the concepts of play and
ecstasy characterizes a form of hermeneutical realism (Davey, 2006)
according to which the meaning of a work of art lies in the work itself:
when we speak of play in reference to the experience of art, this means
neither the orientation nor even the state of mind of the creator or of
those enjoying the work of art, nor the freedom of a subjectivity engaged
in the play, but the mode of being of the work of art itself (Gadamer,
2006b: 102). This mode of being is characterized as representation
(Darstellung) in Truth and Method, and as completion (Vollzug) in
more recent works (Grondin, 2001). Despite their dierences, both con-
cepts refer to the existence of works of art as a completing together, as
presentation. In other words, it can never be identical to itself, even
though its unity or identity is preserved.
If the concepts of play and ecstasy highlight the experience of the work
of art as a hermeneutic experience, the non-dierentiation of subject and
object implied in them raises its own problems. For one thing, ecstasy
does not require the same kind of involvement on the part of the audi-
ence and performer. In fact, the role of the performer in the presentation
of the work of art is much less passive than that of the audience, requir-
ing a greater interpretative eort. In this respect, one might think of the
meaning of the kind of ecstatic experience that Gould undergoes when
performing. Such an experience involves not only a practical dimension
in the form of an incorporated knowledge that allows him to forget about
his bodily movements (what he calls tactilia) but also a prior reading
of the score that allows him to extract the unity of the work. What makes
a great interpreter is not simply technique, but the relations s/he estab-
lishes between the musical phrases, the choice of what to emphasize and
what to leave in the background. As suggested by Turner (2008: 156), it
was precisely this creative element that made Gould so good: Gould . . .
did not replicate Bachs work, but rather discovered its uncanny capacity
for invention.
In principle, this is not problematic for Gadamer, who claims that
every interpretation requires an eort towards synthesis in which the
various facets or aspects of a thing need to be related. This applies
both to the interpretation of the performer and to the interpretation
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Hamlin 11

of the audience. For Gadamer, the hermeneutic identity of a work

consists of something to be understood and this, in turn, means that
the work poses a challenge that must be accepted by someone.
In other words, the mode of being of the work of art requires an
active response to what the work demands: there is always some reect-
ive and intellectual accomplishment involved . . . The challenge of the
work brings the constructive accomplishment of the intellect into play
(Gadamer, 1986: 28). This structure of play relates to one of Gadamers
best-known denitions of understanding, the fusion of the horizons
(Horizontverschmelzung) of the work and the interpreter. But who is
the agent who brings about the fusing? This remains unclear. The
Gadamerian concepts of play and ecstasy imply that understanding is
much more the eect of an inevitable fate than our own doing (Kusch,
1989: 231). On the other hand, the dialogical aspect of this structure
suggests a continuation (or modication) of the subject-object scheme
according to which the interpreter (I) reects on questions posed by the
work (Thou) and actively participates in interpretation. In order to help
us reect on this aspect of participation I will now turn to Goulds con-
siderations on technology and the emergence of a new musical
consciousness.

Technology, Creativity and the Modern Consciousness

Goulds retirement from live performance is perhaps paradoxical if one
considers that a large part of his critique of the romantic concerto centres
on a process of dierentiation and atomization linked to the idea of
isolation. However, if it is true that Gould valued solitude as necessary
for creativity, it is uncertain that his substitution of concert halls for the
world of recording meant greater isolation. According to him, the con-
certo experience cannot dene the total musical experience. From a
historical perspective, it is relatively recent and doomed to be
substituted by recording, a more cogent experience than is now
possible (Gould, 1984: 332), a kind of pre-Renaissance musical experi-
ence in which the composer, performer and audience are deeply
intertwined.
Goulds conception of technology as largely benevolent is somewhat
nave particularly his belief that the alienating forces of concert pro-
duction would be overcome by the recording industry. Nonetheless, his
reections on alternative forms of presentation of works of art provide
an interesting account of interpretation. According to him, his enthusi-
asm for technology derives from an experience with a vacuum cleaner
while studying Mozarts Fugue K. 394 at age 13 or 14. In the middle of
an ongoing argument between Gould and the familys cleaning lady,
she suddenly turned on a vacuum cleaner beside the piano in order to
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annoy him. Deciding not to grant her this little victory, Gould continued
playing. He describes what happened next:

The result was that in the louder passages, this luminously diatonic
music in which Mozart deliberately imitates the technique of
Sebastian Bach became surrounded with a halo of vibrato . . .
And in the softer passages I couldnt hear any sound that I was
making at all. I could feel, of course I could sense the tactile
relation with the keyboard, which is replete with its own kind of
acoustical associations, and I could imagine what I was doing, but I
couldnt actually hear it. But the strange thing was that all of it
suddenly sounded better than it had without the vacuum cleaner . . .
[W]hat I managed to learn through the accidental coming together
of Mozart and the vacuum cleaner was that the inner ear of the
imagination is very much more powerful a stimulant than is any
amount of outward observation. (Gould, 1984: 67)

In order to understand what is at stake here it is necessary to make a

small digression into what Goulds experience is about: the dierences
between the music of Bach and Mozart. Bach is well known for his contra-
puntal style; counterpoint is the musical technique of superimposing two
or more melodies. When superposing melodies, one tends to assume the
leading role, the other becoming an accompaniment. An imbalance is
thus created in the role of each voice. The solution to this is to alternately
change the theme, or main melody, from one voice to the other, giving all
voices the same importance. This is known as the fugal technique, the
name fugue deriving from the idea that the theme is escaping from one
voice to the next. Mozarts music, in contrast, is structured in accords,
something that reinforces the distinction between the theme and the
accompaniment thus the diculty in adapting him to the fugal technique.
It seems that in minimizing the inuence of the melodic element, Gould
who is known for the clarity he gives to the various voices that dialogue in a
fugue has managed to reveal, as it were, the fugal structure of the work.
Even though Gould appears correct in suggesting that external obser-
vation may hinder the necessary involvement for the presentation of the
work, what seems to be at stake is not simply what he calls an inner ear
of the imagination, but what Michel Polanyi (2005) calls personal
knowledge. This refers to a practical ability, something that presupposes
the application of certain premises that we focally ignore (i.e. they do
not constitute the focus of our attention), but which we yet know in a
subsidiary or tacit manner as part of our knowing our way around.4 In
fact, Gould implies that this kind of knowledge is not only tacit, but has
to remain in the background, at the risk of hindering the ow of the
action as when the pianist thinks about the movements of his or her
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Hamlin 13

ngers and can no longer play. In any case, it seems that technology was
incidental to Goulds process; in principle, any disturbance that diverted
attention from the melodic aspect of Mozarts music could have gener-
ated the kind of involvement he describes. Despite this, there are other
reasons to take Goulds reections on the role of technology in experi-
ence of music seriously. In The Prospects of Recording, he argues that
the recording industry has already changed dramatically our experience
of music, thus revealing a central aspect of what Gadamer calls histor-
ically eected consciousness the fact that our consciousness is not only
an eect of history, but that its location in the present necessarily aects
our interpretation of the past.

[T]odays listeners have come to associate musical performance

with sounds possessed of characteristics which two generations ago
were neither available to the profession nor wanted by the public
characteristics such as an analytic clarity, immediacy, and indeed
almost tactile proximity. Within the last few decades the performance
of music has ceased to be an occasion, requiring an excuse and a
tuxedo, and accorded . . . an almost religious devotion; music has
become a pervasive inuence in our lives, and as our dependence on
it has increased, our reverence for it has . . . declined. (Gould, 1984: 333)

This new kind of experience, which generates a new kind of musical

consciousness, also aords the appearance of what Gould calls the new
listener, characterized by an increased participation in the presentation
of the work by taking responsibility for certain decisions. Goulds con-
ception of technology as the midwife of the new listener can be inter-
preted as his solution to Gadamers critique of the modern reduction of
reason to technology that leads the ordinary citizen to cease making
decisions and taking responsibility for them. This argument deserves to
be elucidated. In Lets Ban Applause, Gould (1984: 24550) criticizes
the participation of the audience in the form of applause, arguing that it
aords a false sense of participation. In reality all it does is distract the
performer, promote vanity and increase his or her exhibitionist tenden-
cies. With the development of the Hi Fi system, on the other hand, the
audience or the listener would be able to truly participate in the presen-
tation of the work when s/he adjusts the volume, treble, bass, balance
and tempo of the execution. In his attempts to increase audience partici-
pation through technology, Gould even proposed the development of a
kit-concept of the listeners role, a set of distinct recordings of dierent
interpretations of the same work which could be spliced by the listener in
a home editing set (Payzant, 1992). Of course, the new listener never
emerged, at least not as Gould had predicted. Gould himself conjectures
part of the reason for this, claiming in an interview that the listener does
not know what he wants (Gould apud Payzant, 1992: 45), in the sense
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14 Theory, Culture & Society 0(0)

that he does not have any particular expectations regarding the way a
certain work should be executed.
Goulds characterization of the new listener perhaps arises from the
identication between knowledge and technical control something that,
for Gadamer, is typical of modern consciousness. Gould may be right
when he claims that a technological gadget, such as a microphone,
might help the listener identify an element that is culturally or historically
valued. However, this does not authorize the near automatic relation he
establishes between the new demands posed by technology and an increase
in reexivity. From a Gadamerian perspective, the real issue of modernity
is precisely the opposite; in subsuming practical reason to the instrumental
rationality that characterizes techne, participation decreases to the extent
that understanding becomes increasingly reduced and fragmented.
Whatever the merits of Gadamers critique of technology, the problem
with Goulds interpretation is not his defence of the combination of
music and recording technology per se. In fact, Gadamers concept of
aesthetic indierentiation refers precisely to the lack of distinction between
the way in which a work is presented and its identity.
Even if Goulds optimistic predictions for the alienating nature of
contemporary musical experience were not accurate, it is important to
recognize that his diagnosis was not entirely o the mark. His charac-
terization of the contemporary classical musical scene as sportive and
combative was at odds with his denition of art in terms of its role for
(self) transcendence. This was evident in many ways: the structure of the
modern concerto, the proliferation of international musical competitions
and the emphasis of conservatories of music on the public exhibition of
its students. All of these presuppose a notion of competence based in
uniformity and consensus something fatal for interpretation. This
pushes the problem to a dierent level, one where it is possible to
follow Habermass claim that the danger for contemporary praxis is
not techne, but domination (Bernstein, 1983). This is partly what is at
stake in Goulds defence of the recording industry. It would minimize the
competition that prevents the adequate balance of competence, on the
one hand, and creativity, on the other: The menace of the competitive
idea is that through its emphasis upon consensus, it extracts that mean,
indisputable, readily certiable core of competence and leaves its eager,
ill-advised suppliants forever stunted, victims of a spiritual lobotomy
(Gould, 1984: 25455).
Goulds reections on the relation of music to technology illustrate
two important hermeneutic issues. Firstly, it implies a notion of inter-
pretation as a fusion of past and present that opens up new possibilities
for the future. On the one hand, he was searching for a return to a pre-
Renaissance musical experience in which specialization and dierenti-
ation did not inhibit the sense of unity of ecstatic experience; on the
other, the use of technology for emphasizing contemporary elements
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Hamlin 15

of the work generates something new. What Gould defends is nothing

more than a fusion of horizons without which understanding and inter-
pretation are not possible. It is in this sense that understanding is always
understanding dierently. Secondly, if understanding is only possible
within a tradition, then dierence must be identied within such a trad-
ition; we cannot place ourselves above or beyond it. What Gould calls
competence refers to the knowledge established by tradition; without it,
there is no possibility of making the artists work credible or even recog-
nizing it as art. The practical dimension of this knowledge is what pre-
vents competence from becoming inexible, thus putting creativity at
risk. As he wrote in Advice to a Graduation: to keep the practical
issues of systematized thought and the speculative opportunities of the
creative instinct in balance will be the most important undertaking of
your lives in music (Gould, 1984: 6). This diculty, for him, can only be
overcome by the incorporation of negativity in musical practice.

Negativity, Speculation and Reflexivity

Negativity is central to Goulds thought; he denes it as the ability to
portray ourselves in terms of those things which are antithetical to our
own experience (1984: 6). The similarity to the Gadamerian notion of
hermeneutic experience is noteworthy. For Gould, the experience of
negativity is something that puts us at risk by revealing the fragile and
tentative character of our systems of thought and this, in turn, demands
self-examination and change. Even though Gould sometimes refers to
this self-examination in terms of an introspective contemplation, at
other times he characterizes it in an almost Hegelian conception of specu-
lation, as in the denition of ecstasy that he borrows from the German
composer Karlheinz Stockhausen: Time is suspended. One listens to the
inner self of the sound, the inner self of the harmonic spectrum, the inner
self of a vowel, the inner self (apud Payzant, 1992: 65). It is to the idea of
speculative thought that I now turn in order to show the relations
between ecstasy and self-understanding.
As noted earlier, Gadamers concepts of play and ecstasy represent an
alternative to the subject/object scheme that grounds not only much of
modern philosophy, but also the social sciences. They refer to the
involvement or going along with a structure that can only derivatively
assume the form of something objective upon which we can reect.
However, it has also been suggested that conceiving understanding as
an event into which we are simply thrown, to borrow Heideggers
expression, might imply a greater passivity than Gadamer is willing to
attribute to the interpreter. Gadamers interpretation of the Heideggerian
relation between being-in-the-world (or being always subject to a par-
ticular life-world) and having-a-world (or being potentially critical
and reexive about this life-world) occasionally emphasizes the former.
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This is, however, not consistent and probably explains Heideggers claim
upon reading Truth and Method: This is no longer Heidegger! (apud
Kusch, 1989: 229).
Gadamer attributes to Hegel the anticipation of the dialectic that is
central to both his and Heideggers thought (Pippin, 2002). Using Hegel,
Gadamer (2006b) emphasizes the historically and linguistically limited
character of consciousness without denying that the structure of reex-
ivity is given in all consciousness. The concept of historically eected
consciousness attempts to deal with this tension, and it is not surprising
that Heidegger found Truth and Method to be contentious. As Gadamer
noted in his lectures on Hegel and Heidegger (1976), Heideggers aban-
donment of his hermeneutics of facticity meant not only abandoning a
transcendental conception of self and Dasein as a being whose existence
is a problem to itself, but also terms like history and historicity in
favour of notions like fate (Geschick) and our being fated
(Geschicklichkeit). Despite these dierences with Heideggers later
work, Gadamers appropriation of the Hegelian notion of speculation
should not obscure his suspicion of the metaphysics upon which it is
grounded. In fact, he is clear that Hegels greatest achievement was to
overcome the articialism of the metaphysical language of his time by
substituting it for concepts of ordinary thought. In this sense, what
Gadamer borrows from Hegel relates to one of the central themes of
his thought, which fundamentally links him to Heidegger: interpretation
rests on the natural language that constitutes the basis of all concepts and
of thought itself. This theme, which Charles Taylor (1975, 1989) identies
as the basis of romantic expressivism, was the rst step towards over-
coming the centrality of the subject in philosophy since Descartes.
Hegels speculative philosophy must be understood as a critique of
Kants reduction of reason (Vernuft) to understanding (Verstand).
Whereas the former is based on a type of reasoning that always involves
contradictions (speculation or pure reason), the latter is based on reec-
tion (raisonnement). The rigid subject-object separation that characterizes
understanding can only account for the object as a reality that is totally
alien and strange to consciousness. In dialectical reason, consciousness
enters a speculative moment when the knower starts to recognize itself in
the object, generating the consciousness that what the subject knows of
itself cannot be dissociated from what it knows of the object. It is in this
sense that speculative knowledge is always also self-knowledge (Davey,
2006), and it is this kind of speculation that characterizes the notion of
ecstasy that Gould borrows from Stockhausen.
Gadamer believes that this sort of reasoning is well illustrated in the
dialectics of master and slave and refers to it in Truth and Method to
rearm the Hegelian idea that the life of the mind consists precisely in
recognizing oneself in other being (Gadamer, 2006b: 341). But he does
not agree with Hegel that the dialectics of recognition would ultimately
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allow for absolute consciousness, as is implied in Hegels Absolute Spirit.

For Gadamer, the subject is always a coming into being and the meta-
physical notion of totality as a closed system that grounds the idea of a
completely self-transparent subject is together with the idea that con-
sciousness is fundamentally self-consciousness his main point of dis-
agreement with Hegel. Historically eected consciousness does not focus
on the idea of self-consciousness, but instead on the experience of
Otherness.
It is in Platos dialectics that Gadamer sees a fundamental contribu-
tion to put an end to the illusions of self-knowledge (Gadamer, 2002:
124). Just like Hegelian dialectics, Platonic dialectics rests on the basic
assumption that there are no isolated ideas, showing unity where appear-
ances show only contradictions; identity presupposes dierence
(Gadamer, 1976: 80). But the true merit of Platos dialectics lies in the
constitutive role of language for human thought when he claims that
thought is a dialogue of the soul with itself:

This dialogue, in doubt and objection, is a constant going beyond

oneself and a return to oneself, ones own opinions and ones own
points of view. If anything does characterize human thought, it is
this innite dialogue with ourselves which never leads anywhere
denitively and which dierentiates us from that ideal of an innite
spirit for which all that exists and all truth lies open in a single
moments vision. It is in this experience with language in our
growing up in the midst of this interior conversation with ourselves,
which is always simultaneously the anticipation of conversation
with others and the introduction of others into the conversation
with ourselves that the world begins to open up and achieve
order in all the domains of experience. (Gadamer, 2006b: 547)

This endless dialogue with ourselves and with others not only tells us
who we are, it is who we are. As a practice that requires listening, dia-
logue aords openness towards dierence and provides a powerful way
in which dierence and negativity can be integrated into consciousness;
as an encounter, it puts ourselves at risk. It is in this sense that Gadamer
claims that the work of art speaks to us, like a Thou, demanding us to
change. It is up to us to go along with it, to hear what it asks from us
and to provide our own answers to its demands. This is the dialectic of
question and answer; it precedes the dialectic of interpretation. The pos-
sibility of moving from one to the other rests on our excentric position-
ality a term that Gadamer borrows from Helmuth Plessners
philosophical anthropology5 meaning that, despite our particular loca-
tion (within a body, within a horizon, within a tradition), we can, by
willing and by acting, go beyond the natural endowment of a living
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being (Gadamer, 1996: 13). This willing and acting, however, is only
possible to the extent that we are not centred beings, but capable of
transit and relation, of moving from the internal to the external and
vice-versa (Plessner, 1995: 41). So, even though we are not subjects in the
Cartesian sense of completeness and self-transparency, we are capable of
self-knowledge and action. Most importantly, this self-knowledge is only
possible to the extent that we can be with an Other in a kind of ecstatic
self-forgetfulness that points to our ontological openness to the world.

Concluding Remarks
I have tried to argue that Gadamers critique of the epistemology-centred
philosophy of consciousness does not entail the rejection of subjectivity.
While maintaining the critique of the so-called metaphysics of the sub-
ject, Gadamerian hermeneutics provides a powerful decentring of sub-
jectivity without denying the possibility of self-consciousness, reexivity
and initiative necessary for accounting for human agency. Given the
centrality of aesthetic experience in both denying the epistemic primacy
of the modern subject and in illustrating how hermeneutical experience
organizes subjectivity, I have chosen music as the theme of a dialogical
encounter between Gadamer and Glenn Gould. As a performing art,
music illustrates the cognitive and practical dimensions of interpretation.
These dimensions were emphasized by Gadamer and Gould, respectively.
While noting the pre-interpreted character of musical reception and per-
formance, both authors point to the fact that dierence, alterity, and
negativity lie at the heart of creative interpretation, cultivation and
self-knowledge. The notion of ecstasy, understood as a type of self-for-
getfulness that represents both a non-dierentiation between subject and
object and a return to tradition, provides the basis for a conception of
subjectivity grounded on linguistic, historical and cultural conditions,
albeit not reducible to them. In this sense, I maintain that the notion
of ecstatic subjects is a powerful alternative to both the self-centred
notion of subjectivity that has characterized much of the human sciences
and its anti-humanist counterpart that has made it impossible for social
scientists to account for human agency.

Acknowledgements
This paper was written during a sabbatical leave at the Centre for Social Ontology at the
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Apart from nancial support
from the Brazilian Coordination for Improvement of Higher Education Personnel
(Capes, grant number 1314-12-2), I received generous support and advice from a
number of people. I wish to thank Marcio Lins, Frederic Vandenberghe, Margaret
Archer, Kate Forbes-Pitt, Ismael Al-Amoudi, William Outhwaite, Thomas Leithauser,
Silke Weber and Gabriel Peters. I am also deeply grateful to the anonymous referees of
Theory, Culture & Society.
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Hamlin 19

Notes
1. Person is the term Gadamer prefers in order to avoid the aporias of the
metaphysics of the subject (see Gadamer, 2000).
2. It should be noted that there is no distinction between understanding and
interpretation in Gadamers hermeneutics. Given the universality of the her-
meneutic problem, every understanding is already an interpretation.
3. Intentionality conceived as a distant and disinterested attitude towards an
object, as the way in which individual consciousness reflects an object that is
simply present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit), apart from any practical or existen-
tial concerns.
4. In his Autobiographical Reflections, Gadamer (2007: 34) refers to his con-
ception of hermeneutic experience as the equivalent of Polanyis conception
of personal knowledge.
5. This also marks a distance from Heideggers critique of the metaphysics of
the subject to the extent that it opens up the possibility for a humanistic study
of human beings. For an account of the HeideggerPlessner debate on this
issue, see Plessner (2010).

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Cynthia Hamlin is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Federal

University of Pernambuco, Brazil. Her interests include contemporary
social theory and the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences.
Her books include Beyond Relativism: Raymond Boudon, Cognitive
Rationality and Critical Realism (Routledge, 2001, 2012) and
Spiegazione scientica e Relativismo Culturale (with Raymond Boudon
and Enzo di Nuoscio; LUISS Edizione, 2000). She has published in jour-
nals such as the Journal Fur Psychologie (Germany), Sociological Theory
(USA), Revista Brasileira de Ciencias Sociais (Brazil) and Revista
Latinoamericana de Metodologa de la Investigacion Social (Argentina).