Musik Und Mathematik I. Hellas 1: Aphrodite

by Friedrich A. Kittler

Wir möchten euch Musik und Mathematik erzählen: das Schönste nach der Liebe, das Schwerste nach der Treue." Die beiden Worte, die den Titel einer Tetralogie aus Hellas, Roma Aeterna, Hesperien und Turing-Galaxis bilden, stehen für die Wurzeln von Kunst und Wissen: musikè, die Lust des Singens, Tanzens, Spielens heißt nach der Muse, die im Herzen alles aufbewahrt und daher davon sagen kann. Musik macht also nach, was Musen tun, seit sie auf ihrem Götterberg mit allem Singen angehoben haben. Aus fast dem selben Ursprung stammt mathesis, das Lehren im allgemeinen, und Mathematik, das Denken über Zahlen im besonderen. Bei Homer heißt mathein nämlich noch nicht zählen oder rechnen, wie Aristoteles gelehrt hat, mathôn nennt vielmehr ein dunkles Wissen, das Helden erst nach Jahrzehnten des Erfahrens in Fleisch und Blut gegangen ist. Unter den wenigen Reimen, die in Griechenohren widerhallten, blieb der alte Spruch von pathein/mathein, leiden und lernen unverloren. Friedrich Kittlers aufmerksamste Lektüren folgen also erst Odysseus und den Sirenen, denen er eine - gemessen an Horkheimer und Adorno - atemberaubende Neudeutung widmet, um in Band I/2 nach Aphrodite Eros in den Sphärenharmonien Platons und im Spiel von lógos und phonè bei Aristoteles zu begegnen. Band II läßt mit dem heidnischen und christlichen Rom Sexus und Caritas folgen, Band III mit Hesperien die Minne und die Liebe, und Band IV schließlich widmet sich der Turing-Galaxis und Heideggers Gestell.

409 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Friedrich Kittler was a literary scholar and a media theorist.

Kittler is influential in the new approach to media theory that grew popular starting in the 1980s
Kittler's central project is to "prove to the human sciences [...] their technological-media a priori" (Hartmut Winkler), or in his own words: "Driving the human out of the humanities",[4] a title that he gave a work that he published in 1980.

Kittler sees an autonomy in technology and therefore disagrees with Marshall McLuhan's reading of the media as "extensions of man": "Media are not pseudopods for extending the human body. They follow the logic of escalation that leaves a written history behind it.

Among Kittler's theses was his tendency to argue, with a mixture of polemicism, apocalypticism, erudition, and humor, that technological conditions were closely bound up with epistemology and ontology itself. This claim and his style of argumention is aptly summed up in his dictum "Nur was schaltbar ist, ist überhaupt"—a phrase that could be translated as "Only that which is switchable, exists" or more freely, "Only that which can be switched, can be."

He studied German studies, Romance philology and philosophy at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg in Freiburg im Breisgau. During his studies, he was influenced by Jacques Lacan's, Michel Foucault's and Martin Heidegger's writings.

In 1976, Kittler received his doctorate in philosophy after a thesis on the poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. Between 1976 and 1986 he worked as academic assistant at the university's Deutsches Seminar. In 1984, he earned his Habilitation in the field of Modern German Literary History.

He had several stints as a Visiting Assistant Professor or Visiting Professor at universities in the United States, such as the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Stanford University.
He was recognized in 1996 as a Distinguished Scholar at Yale University and in 1997 as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York.

Reviews

[homoness · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh my, what to make of this book? It's certainly "interesting". Basicly, Kittler tries to show how music and mathematics not only are intimately related to one another (uncontroversial) but also have their origins in the vowel alphabet of the Greeks which in itself was invented in order to allow for the precise mapping of Homeric songs. One other essential aspect is the question of love, which to Kittler permeated Ancient Greek culture, and motivated many Greek men to sing, for only then could they seduce women (and occassionally also a handsome ephebe).

So, that's an interesting thesis, yet the book itself is also riddled with almost ludicrous heaps of sexism which make the whole book rather unpalatable. In way, reading late Kittler is like watching someone fuck up really bad, yet there's a certain perverse pleasure to watching them fuck up, so you just keep on looking.

[Karl Georg]

Kommentar folgt - bin noch nicht sicher.