From: Suk-Jun Kim ()
Date: May 16, 2008
Subject:
Re: Objectivity (Was maybe we can discuss the definition of)
> I think is remarkable how this discussion tends to veer into jokes,
> irony, and the like instead of actual argument. By any ordinary
> rules of debate, this kind of move is -- a joke.
Kundera said: "Jokes, anecdotes, funny stories: they are the best
evidence that a sharp sense of the real and an imagination that
ventures into the implausible can make a perfect pairing."
> Ok, now I am prepared to put forward what I believe is a good
> argument for the existence of objective norms in music. We are
> living in a time of extreme ferment, musically. Thanks to the vast
> store of written and sound records, thanks to the dissemination of
> higher education, thanks to mechanical means of transportation and
> foreign education and emigration of peoples and globalization and
> what all, musical practice and style are under enormous pressure.
> Genres multiply and divide, combine, influence each other, die and
> are reborn.
>
> If musical norms are purely relative, this is a meaningless play of
> events, in which my personal taste or your personal taste will
> assert itself, or be ground down, for purely extrinsic reasons that
> have nothing to do with music.
>
> If musical reasons have any part to play in this dialectic of music
> history that we are living through -- as I am sure they do -- these
> reasons transcend any personal or tribal taste by necessity, because
> it is this very taste that is evolving. If any norm is guiding or
> judging this evolution, it is a super-personal norm. An objective,
> universal norm.
Musical reasons, if they exist, transcend personal or tribal taste,
not by necessity, but by chance or force. And if there is any 'super-
personal norm', it is perhaps this very chance or force—which,
ironically, defies the very objectivity.
Best,
Jun