From Ancient Greece to the Present Day: Reflections on Personhood, Music and Music Education

Abstract

Throughout this chapter Walker links contemporary attitudes and responses to music with the Hellenic foundations of western thought on such matters, and their evolution over the last two millennia. The idea of personhood is central to the various historical and contemporary theories thought to explain music's effects on our behaviour. Questions such as whether or not personhood involves individual freedom of interpretation and judgement, or is constrained by universal laws limiting such freedom, are central to the arguments that have characterized western thought from Plato to Nietzsche and Derrida. And many of the questions raised by Plato and many of the thinkers of ancient Greece are still largely unanswered.