COMMENTARY TO KANT'S ANNOTATION ON A MUSICAL EXAMPLE BY EBERHARD

Abstract

In the Vorarbeiten to the Streitschrift against Eberhard there is a handwritten annotation by Kant containing a certain abundance of terms drawn from music. These four lines are preceded by the indication of a non-identified page interval. The present article, while revealing the source to which Kant indirectly alludes, comments on a musical example by Eberhard against critical philosophy, the same that in all likelihood gave rise to Kant's annotation. After some initial observations on the background of Eberhard's proposed metaphor - namely: the theory of harmonics, we shall undertake some introductory philological considerations related to the musical vocabulary used by both authors in the texts at hand. Then, we shall proceed to attempt an internal analysis of the supposed argumentative efficacy of the metaphor in question. By this analysis, we shall indicate Hume as the main philosophical reference from which a good deal of the discursive structure of this offensive musical strategy stems; a strategy which, though not unheard of, is not exactly common.