Den tekniske rasjonaliteten – og musikken

Abstract

The Technical Rationality - and Music

A lot of music educational activity appears to concentrate on bringing pupils in contact with the “outside or surface of music”, that which can be described technically and manageably. There is for instance not much focus on musical experience as existential experience. In this article the author discusses this situation related to the dominance of what is often called technical rationality – a sort of rationality from the areas of technology and economy, which undoubtedly has become an important part of our modern society’s ideals of life as a whole. To understand technical rationality on a deeper level, the attention is turned to the term techne, as we know it from Aristotle, given that it is quite commonly interpreted as some sort of technical knowledge concerning the development of technical skills. The discussions of these concepts are related to Hannah Arendt’s discussion concerning our modern oblivion of the differences between the three forms of human activity (labor, work and action), the thinking of Aristotle on the three forms of human knowledge (episteme, techne and phronesis), as well as his concepts poiesis and praxis, and Martin Heidegger’s discussion concerning the Aristotelian concept techne.