Spectator or listener

In the introduction to a collection of Gabriel Marcel’s writings on music ( Music And Philosophy ), the editors note that Marcel prefers aural to visual metaphors to express the experience of being in the world. They quote Marcel:

“I am not a spectator who is looking for a world of structures susceptible of being viewed clearly and distinctly, but rather . . . . I listen to the voices and appeals comprising that symphony of Beingwhich is for me, in the final analysis, a supra-rational unity beyond images, words, and concepts.”

They further explain that sound, especially in music, is capable of expressing Marcel’s central notions of presence and participation more fully than visual analogies:

“Presence is capable of deepening and is correlated with concern. What is a living presence for me is something in which I participate, something without which I cannot properly conceive myself. ‘Over there’ is simultaneously ‘in here.’ . . . One is unable to separate oneself from such participation in order to secure an objective mastery. Thus ones own body is a mystery; ones sensory awareness of what lies outside oneself is a mystery; ones relation to ones family, beloved, friends is a mystery; and the way in which all of this is horizoned by a sense of the totality is the final ontological mystery. For all this, as in relation to ones own body, feeling is the sign, the index of participation. The deeper our participation, the more it tends to rise to the level of feeling. Feeling, participation, presence, and mystery go together. Indeed, Marcel has said that ‘my thinking takes its departure above all from feeling, from reflection on feeling and on its implications.’”