In class the other day we talked about how consciousness moves through the world exerting its will on everything it encounters. In doing so consciousness is also seeking recognition of its own freedom to do so. However, no object consciousness encounters can give it the satisfaction it craves except another consciousness. Objects may react to consciousness which, in a way affirms consciousness' freedom, but these affirmations are not satisfying. Consciousness seeks the recognition of an equal, another consciousness, another free agent, and anything less than that is unfulfilling. When it finally finds another free agent it seeks recognition, but so does the other consciousness, and a battle of wills ensues. Both consciousness, stake their lives on the recognition of the other, and the consciousness which backs down ends up learning a valuable lesson about itself and about its new lord.
And it was with this whole process on my brain that I was recently listening to a podcast from the NPR program, Radio Lab (which is all-around awesome by the way). This particular podcast, titled Dawn of Midi, explores that band's music and how it came to be. A link to it can be found here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/313542-dawn-midi/ This particular band plays a sort of minimalist acoustic electronic music inspired by African and Moroccan trance sounds. The interesting thing about the show for me, however, was the discussion of technology's role (or lack thereof). So this band basically plays electronic-sounding music with acoustic instruments which is in itself not that impressive, plenty of groups do that, and some probably do it better. However, the hosts were claiming that we could not have had this particular sound without first having had the electronic music. Essentially technology used to attempt to replicate musical instruments, ultimately it allowed for all new sounds and styles of music, but what this band and others have done is used the same old instruments to build on those newly broadened sound horizons.
The hosts claimed that this process has not only happened in music, but in many different fields. For instance, they claimed that surfers will now paddle out themselves to giant waves that only a few years ago they had to be towed into by jet ski, and only a few years before that they thought could not be ridden at all. It seems that in these situations technology has shown us possibilities that existed all along but that we did not know about. For Hegel, it does not seem that consciousness can really learn much from passive objects; it can exert its will upon them freely, and they do not challenge or affirm its freedom, but I wonder if this is always the case. Can some objects help consciousness to develop, even if their recognition is nonexistent or not fully satisfying?
P.S.
My apologies for this post, my brain is fully checked out today for some reason. So if this was completely unintelligible or if all the thoughts don't quiet fit together, I apologize.
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. --G.W.F. Hegel
Jonathan, you've proposed an interesting case that may help expand Hegel's analysis. (Before I go on, I just want to second that Radiolab is, indeed, excellent.) Hegel, clearly, focuses on a particular kind of development, a kind that, i'd argue, cannot be developed through any other means than the one that he proposes. Again, and it is hard to keep this in mind, at time, the progression of consciousness through imminent critique unfolds, continuously, until Absolute Knowledge. And, even then, Hegel's project has only just begun. I think your example, of music, perhaps underscores Heidegger's thesis put forth in his essay, "The Question Concerning Technology." On a more abstract level, he claims that the presence of technology transforms the ways in which the world presents itself to us; or, rather, the way in which we en-frame the world. In your example, electronic music changes the way in which this particular band approaches more "traditional" instruments. To borrow on of H's examples, he argues that technology changes the ways in which we see a standing forrest. Where once the forrest would have been a place for hunting/gathering, and other symbiotic activities, the abstract subject now sees x number of trees, x mass of wood, or x number of cabinets, etc. In other words, one cannot help but approach forests in this way. Whether one could see this as a development in the same progressive, teleological, Hegelian way, I'm not so sure. Undoubtedly though, our relationship to these inanimate objects goes through alternations.
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