Rhuthmos

Search for Stability: Rhythm in the Philosophies of Husserl, Deleuze & Guattari

Ineta Kivle — 2024-05-27T10:40:29Z

Sommaire

This article has already been published in The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, Numer 61 (2/2021). We warmly thank Ineta Kivle and The Polish Journal of Aesthetics for the permission to republish it here.

Abstract : During the pandemic situation while the usual order changes and the search for new elements of security become more active, rhythm studies may provide a deeper understanding of human and ongoing processes. The current study views rhythm as a force of stability in the context of Husserl's and Deleuze & Guattari's philosophies. It seeks common substantiation for sociality, humanity, art, and nature, showing the organic connection between a person's internal constitution and outer environment, the rhythmic centre's manifestations, and surroundings.

Keywords : Philosophy, Rhythm, Territory, Horizon, Husserl, Deleuze, Guattari

Introduction

In the search for stability during a global emergency, rhythm studies promote new philosophical ways of conceptualizing and reveal the common ontological ground for philosophy, art, the environment, and humans. The current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic confirms how important is that the rhythm of one`s own mind-body is in harmonious connection with surroundings. How does the rhythm of people's lives change in unusual situations ? How do rhythm's manifestations vary in philosophy, art, and nature ? During the pandemic emergency, when the usual order changes, a search for new elements of security becomes more active. Rhythm studies give a deeper understanding of the human and ongoing processes by developing original characterizations of the current situation in the world. The study reveals essential rhythmic components at the centre of rhythmic manifestations, the territory of pulsing space-time, belonging surroundings, and mutual movements. These components concern existential and ontological formations, human existence and being, and artwork structures and societal processes. Rhythm is a pulse that goes through various metric structures of music, paintings, poetry, and philosophy. It organizes the order of the mind-body, insinuates social processes, and determines nature. In the current study, rhythm will not be analyzed as a fundamental element of artwork composition. It will be explored as a thinkable concept for searching for new philosophical approaches and conceptualizing different processes, including art objects and music.

The notion of rhythm has been used in philosophy since its origin. In ancient times, it was mentioned in connection with the cosmos, nature, the internal constitution of the human, speech and language, poetry, sculpture, and music. Initially, rhythm was used as a technical term to describe order, movement, and changes. [1] As a uniting force, rhythm holds together different relations of different things : music and education, melody, voice, and motions of the body, virtue, and soul. Ancient times contain ideas that are still relevant in the 21^st century. In the previous decades, rhythm was regarded as an immanent element of audial-visual spaces and times, a permanent research object in the social sciences, humanities, arts, information technologies, and meta-sciences.

Studies of rhythm relate to different spheres, but simultaneously they form a complex application of appropriate and encompassing philosophical technique. The theoretical approach to rhythm transforms and changes together with conceptual ambitions ; therefore, they broaden the scope of the concept's definition in correspondence with the explored philosophical stances. A multidisciplinary approach deepens the understanding of rhythm and shows the role of rhythm in the world around us. It gives new opportunities for philosophical reflections and makes human activities clearer. In general, rhythm donates to meter, sequence, repetition, order, measured time, and space, thus showing quantitative assessments. Differently from the mathematically measurable, world philosophy studies the immanence of rhythm and opens the deepest levels of the human constitution (Kivle 2021, 312-319).

This article aims to show two different philosophical approaches to rhythm. In the first approach, the intensity and space of rhythm are mainly determined by the human, where subjective activities create a centre of rhythmic surroundings. In the second approach, rhythm is seen as an immanent force of surroundings, and centres of rhythmic manifestations formed by individual and social activities, and the natural and even cosmic processes. Both philosophical approaches show the human role in the organization of processes and the world's response to human activities, even in pandemic emergencies. In this case, Husserl's phenomenology and Deleuze & Guattari's philosophical vitalism are viewed as two different philosophies that show rhythm as a subject matter of investigation and a methodological instrument for opening rhythmic structures in the world even in unusual situations. Thus, this view shows the more profound philosophical aspects at work. These two philosophical approaches meet and cross each other, characterize the current situation in the world and the vibrant life of people, and are concerned with the processes of art and culture. Human constitution is not always in the same rhythm with outer reality, and the capability to form stability following one's subjectivity is fragile and transformative : a human and the world around them can confront each other and develop deconstructions. Pascal Michon, [2] a French philosopher of Rhythm Studies, writes :

It is no coincidence that ‘rhythm' has become, since the 1990s, in a growing number of disciplines, both a subject of investigation and a methodological instrument. Its success is so remarkable that it seems now on the verge of becoming a new scientific paradigm, somewhat like system, structure, individual or difference in the second half of the 20^th century (Michon 2017, Back Cover).

The Methodological Approach

The present study examines only one form of rhythm's manifestation that shows movement between centres (a human, a central point in the territory) and surroundings (belonging territories, spaces, places, horizons). Rhythmic structures with only three essential components—the centre, surroundings, and joint movement—make it possible to compare different philosophical approaches : those who view rhythm directly as an immanent force of art, society, nature, cosmos and those who do not write about rhythm directly, although they maintain a structure of the centre, and surroundings. The study shows how in both cases, the elements of a rhythmic structure and its field of activity are revealed : 1) how rhythm can be related to Husserl's philosophy ; 2) how certain aspects of rhythm's manifestation are marked in Deleuze & Guattari's philosophy. The article is structured by the introduction and methodological approach, two unrelated parts : the presence of rhythm in the phenomenology of Husserl and rhythm's manifestations in the philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari. Husserl's phenomenology makes it possible to consider rhythm as an experienced phenomenon like meaningful sound in the flux of internal time consciousness. It is distinct from Deleuze & Guattari's approach to rhythm as an immanent force of surroundings. These two different immanences of rhythm : rhythm as immanently given to subjectivity and rhythm as an immanent force of the cosmos, nature, chaos, et cetera, determine the layout of the present paper. The phenomenological approach is viewed separately from philosophical vitalism. A common principle for both is the relation between a center and the belonging surroundings. This principle permits the analysis of rhythmic interactions related to the pandemic disaster's time. The conclusion presents common aspects and differences of Rhythm Studies in philosophical approaches and tries to show their concern about emergency.

Rhythm and Its Surroundings in the Context of Husserl's Phenomenology

Following the rhythmic manifestations between a centre and the surroundings, phenomenology shows bilateral directions between “I” and meaningful rhythmic worlds. The intentional “I” constitutes the world and corresponds to it with the individual rhythms of one's own, in such a way the mutual relations of a typical meaningful horizon form. Rhythm unites those who have an akin sense of rhythm. “I” is in the centre of forming meaningful worlds, and by mind-body activities and empathy to others, an intentional intersubjective continuity is constituted. A person is viewed as incorporated in a We-unity by a shared experience of rhythmic manifestations.

The interactions of We-unity form rhythmic pulsations, including everyday rhythm, mind-body rhythm, artistic rhythm, and such fundamental components of being as silence, sound, light, dark, peace, and movement. Silence, as opposed to sound, and light, as opposed to dark, maintain the rhythm of music and painting. By entering in or passing away from audible and visible horizons, a work of art maintains a rhythmic dynamic. Sound and silence are intentionally connected : sounds flux, then they are interrupted by silence. They organize a specific rhythm of speech, talk, or any other performance. Likewise, we can listen to silence overwhelmed by incoming sounds. A meaningful silence has adhered exclusively to the sounds determined precisely by this silence : the sound touches the silence and, conversely, the silence touches the sound. Absolute silence and absolute sound dwell into imagination, and experience is not possible. The living body always meets the rhythm of meaningful silence and meaningful sonority (Kivle 2018, 370-373).

Rhythm appears as a perceptual series of movements and vibrations, as repetitions of time-space fragments of a flowing experience. The phenomenology of internal time consciousness relates to the temporal experience of rhythm as the temporality of experience. The temporality of rhythmic experience insinuates and surrounds the perception of rhythm, bodily awareness, spaces of rhythmic vibrations, sounds and colours, human voices, and other people. Employing Husserl's cognitions, Don Ihde widens phenomenology with an existential experience of voice. He connects sound, rhythm, and stability in a common temporal background : the rhythms of sounds are structured by their auditory temporality where rhythm manifests repetition that Ihde calls “an index for auditory stability” (Ihde 1976, 108). By focusing not only on the manifestations but also on an experienced rhythm, phenomenology binds the multiplicity of different durations of rhythms. All these grasped durations are meaningful acts that constitute a particular experience. The rhythms of bodies, languages, sounds, and voices take intersubjective dimensions, including sensations and kinaesthetic perceptions, the flow of internal time duration and constituted space-time. The rhythm of dance occupies the body and mind, and via the body, movements forms sounding and rhythmic territories. It also relates to voice ; the body vibrates with a rhythm that spreads out of speech and intentionally binds all elements included in the appropriate territory of the speaker.

On the one hand, the performer belongs to the created territories of dance, music, or speech. On the other hand, the artworks' intentions continue in a performer weaving and creating a rhythmic unity. While widening a sound with the existential experience of the voice and connecting sound, rhythm, and the voice in a common temporal background, it is seen how the rhythms are structured by their auditory temporality and repetition, forming particular stability of the current fluxing event ; simultaneously acting meanings and impressions form a world of rhythm belonging to a concrete situation. All kinds of constituted phenomenological worlds (theoretical, surrounding, intentional, intersubjective, life-world) have a common designation, a meaningful horizon :

Every subjective process has a process “horizon” which changes with the alteration of the nexus of consciousness to which the process belongs and with the alteration of the process itself from phase to phase of its flow—an intentional horizon of reference to potentialities of consciousness that belong to the process itself (Husserl 1982, 109).

Horizons of human thoughts, intentions, and experiences show how a meaningful world fuses, changes, and expands. Applying the phenomenological usage of the horizon to a musical concert shows how the intentional territory of sonority changes, giving meaningful intersubjective and audible events and a thinkable horizon and common intellectual experience. Any concert is characterized by its rhythms, circumstances, and activities that make their environment and implement their forms : the sonority of words and music makes precisely this or that performance. Creative activities unite silence and words and sight, contemplation, and thinking, justifying that the human constitutes related spheres of sonority, visibility, sensitiveness, and understanding (Kivle 2009, 59-70).

The horizon is changeable, open, conditioned. It widens and narrows depending on what we are “focusing on” and what appears in it. A person is a listener and spectator, a contemplator, thinker, and performer open to the world and others. The centre of a horizon is formed by what is heard, understood, said, and perceived. It could be a conversation between two or more participants of the intersubjective world or a meaningful world of the inner speech of the self. A horizon is a field as it is seen from the centre. It is the limit of an extreme type of “observation” : “Beyond this limit is a region of the invisible, because whatever becomes visible does so only within the field of vision and must be given to that field. Outside the field lies nothing visible” (Ihde 1976, 106-107). Opening and transforming horizons allow the invisible to become visible, the silent to become audible, and form particular rhythmic environments. Silence and invisibility belong to the infinite side of intentionality, and owing to this unexplainable emptiness, they form rhythmic relations with visibility and audibility appearing in different manifestations : music, speech, and everyday life. For example, Husserl's concept of the lifeworld affords the feasibility of interpreting rhythm in everyday life and fortifies that human life is understandable from what is heard and listened to, what is seen and what is touched, and what is contemplated, thought and performed. The lifeworld widens the interpretations of rhythm with the surrounding world as the realm populated by all kinds of things that present themselves to us in our everyday experience.

A centre is formed in dependence of realized activity ; not only subjectivity governs a situation, but so does that what makes the central role : “The notion of a centre, however, calls for a preliminary and general location. Centre partly, but only partly, relates to the previously developed notion of a focal core within some dimension or the totality of global experience” (Ihde 1976, 150). The centre does not stand alone but is always located in one or another place of a belonging environment. It moves from a centre to the periphery, turns around, takes the central role, or detaches itself. The stability of rhythm is not determined solely by making a static centre but also by balanced rhythmic movement inside the territory per the significance of all included elements.

The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. Applying this to the thinking mind, we speak of the narrowness of horizon, of the possible expansion of horizon, of the opening up of new horizons, and so forth (Gadamer 1989, 302).

The horizon opens the flexibility of understanding and interpretations, giving exclusively empathic concern to others where the rhythms of the life of one's own include all the complexity of experience open to transformations. This opening is only one aspect of the phenomenological analysis of rhythm.

Rhythm studies related to phenomenology have not yet been widely developed. The reason for it may be in the fact that Husserl does not write about rhythm directly. However, phenomenology gives an impulse for various interpretations of rhythm : rhythms of intersubjective communication ; the flux of internal time, time-objects ; rhythms of the internal constitution of man and rhythms of surrounding worlds ; bodily and sensory perception of rhythm, et cetera. Phenomenology of rhythm is based on direct experience, therefore, giving feasibility for analyses of how rhythm is given, how its meanings are constituted and how rhythm differs from other meaningful phenomena (Kivle 2021, 312-319).

Rhythm's relations between the centre and surroundings also show the importance of human capability to control and maintain harmonious rhythmic interactions with world processes even in unusual situations like a pandemic emergency. “I” not only determines one's rhythms towards an outreach but also “listens to” the surroundings. These bilateral relations mark a joint approach with other philosophical branches, in this case, the philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari.

Deleuze & Guattari's Views on Rhythm

The article considers two aspects of rhythm present in Deleuze & Guattari's philosophy : rhythm as an activity that creates stability and rhythm as a force of becoming other. By separating chaos and establishing a centre of stability, rhythm maintains the order of belonging territories, and by becoming other, territories transform and obtain expressive qualities. These two aspects are intertwined and include crucial concepts that complement and relate to rhythm : refrain, milieu, chaos, territory, centre of stability, becoming other, repetition, circle of belonging, and in-between. These concepts have particular meanings, and their translation into English unites various interpretations : “milieu” means “surroundings,” but in combination with “medium” and “middle” ; “power” look as if it is a “capacity for existence,” “a capacity to affect or be affected,” et cetera (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, xvi-xviii).

Territory as a directional space and a circle of belonging has its own centre of intensity that is at once within the territory and outside it, and around what cosmic forces come together. Activities of such centres are not subjectively directed : the circles of a belonging move to other regions not by intentionality but by their capacity to be open themselves by themselves once over again. Opening a circle of belonging in another region means displacing and moving made by different elements such as lines, figures, sounds, et cetera. In other words, by including different milieus, various kinds of the exterior, interior, and other milieus are also included in moving and opening new territories.

Rhythmic manifestations concern correlations between three positions dedicated to the migration and the pulsations of territories : 1) territorialization—the taking of territory by separating from chaos and shaping boundaries ; 2) deterritorialization—the decontextualization of an actual territory and leaving it ; 3) reterritorialization relates to the establishment of a new relationship and the beginning of a new process and new territories. These fluid processes show “becoming” as fragile and penetrable structures maintained by refrain and rhythm. In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shaping of boundaries makes crucial actuality for the the maintenance of the safety of a territory :

The territory is, first of all, the critical distance between two beings of the same species : Mark your distance. What is mine is, first of all, my distance. I process only distances. Don't let anybody touch me ; I growl if anyone enters my territory, I put up placards. Critical distance is a relation based on matters of expression. It is a question of keeping at a distance the forces of chaos knocking at the door (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 319-320).

The territory is marked by a refrain that entertains internal relations and forms a continuity with other territories by three components : 1) a point of order, the centre of stability, or an inside : it can be home, song, voice, or a space of safety ; 2) a circle of control that includes a safe inside as well as a containable outside ; 3) a line of an outside, a movement of transformation and migration. It is impossible to divide these three components into separate parts. They increase each other, pass over to go to the outside, and flow together. Refrain organizes and marks territory, connects territory with internal impulses and external circumstances, identifies and reorganizes functions, and regroups forces to centralize the territory or go outside it.

The refrain is a prism, a crystal of space-time. It acts upon that which surrounds it, the sound of light, extracting from it various vibrations, or decompositions, projections, or transformations. The refrain also has a catalytic function : not only to increase the speed of the exchanges and reactions in that, which surrounds it, but also to assure indirect interactions between elements devoid of so-called natural affinity, and thereby to form organized masses. The refrain is, therefore, of the crystal or protein type (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 348-349).

Territories—material, intellectual, musical, or spiritual—maintain relevance to the existing rhythm and refrain because they are created and maintained by rhythm and refrain : “Territorialization is an act of rhythm that has become expressive of milieu components that have become qualitative” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 315). The notion of “expressive qualities” refers to feelings and emotions. It shows relations of one another and expresses dynamics of interior–exterior circumstances. Not only rhythm and refrain but centre and frame also mark territory : there can be no territory with no frame or boundary, no art. A territory always comes together with spatio-temporal coordinates (location, concreteness, actuality) and immeasurable qualities. There are various kinds of rhythms, but one feature is shared : rhythm is immanent to a milieu initially. It is not directed subjectively ; it is the primordial force that separates milieu from chaos.

Rhythm is the milieus' answer to chaos. What chaos and rhythm have in common is their in-between : between two milieus, rhythm-chaos or the chaosmos : “Between night and day, between that which is constructed and that which grows naturally, between mutations from the inorganic to the organic, from plant to animal, from animal to humankind, yet without this series constituting a progression […] In this in-between, chaos becomes rhythm, not inexorably, but it has a chance to. Chaos is not the opposite of rhythm but the milieu of all milieus” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 313).

These binary aspects of rhythm to be in day and night, to be in the world of animals and the world of humans, justify rhythm's possibility to be in-between two or more different milieus. Rhythm is in-between milieus and in-between milieus and chaos. A milieu is separated from chaos by rhythm, and “rhythm is milieus' answer to chaos.” Rhythm and milieu can be considered an inseparable couple : one milieu relates to another by rhythm over one another, where every milieu is vibratory, constituted by the periodic repetition of the components. Kindred components limit every milieu. In other words, it would be a potency for opening and serving as a basis for another :

Thus, the living thing has an exterior milieu of materials, an interior milieu of composing elements and composed substances, an intermediary milieu of membranes and limits, and an annexed milieu of energy sources and actions-perceptions. Every milieu is coded, a code defined by periodic repetition, but each code is in a perpetual state of transcoding or transduction. Transcoding or transduction is the manner in which one milieu serves as the basis for another, or conversely is established atop another milieu, dissipates in it, or is constituted in it (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 313).

Even in the situations where rhythm lies hidden, it takes place and stands “beyond” audibility and visibility. However, though being silently presented and hidden, rhythm maintains its substructures that come out from a milieu by becoming other where muteness takes visual and auditory shapes. That could be considered a movement from background to becoming other : to occur, possess something in a new quality, and be in rhythm.

Becoming is undoubtedly not imitating or identifying with something ; neither is it regressing-progressing ; neither is it corresponding, establishing corresponding relations ; neither is it producing, producing a filiation, or producing through filiation. Becoming is a verb with a consistency all of its own ; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, “appearing,” “being,” “equalling,” or “producing” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 239).

There are various forms of becoming : voices alter from tenor to soprano by becoming-woman or becoming-child, birdsongs of Messianen's music take musical quality by becoming-animal. Language becomes other by human voice activity and occurs differently in music, talk, or performance. Becoming other is compared to becoming quality : philosophy measures chaos and puts it in the form of a concept, science develops function to exchange with chaos, art is a response to chaos producing percepts and affects. These boundaries of becoming others are not self-protective but define a stage of performance that becomes property and territory quality. The approach to chaos is not controlling it but cutting fragments of chaos into philosophical discourse, into a work of art or experiment. Art generates sensations and perceptions never before experienced : the visual arts render visual forces that are themselves invisible, the musical arts render non-sonorous forces sonorous. In such an approach, art is not the activation of the sensation of a lived body, but art transforms the lived body into an unliveable power. Art intensifies resonance and dissonance between bodies and the cosmos, opens the universe of becoming-other : from the finite to the infinite, from the body of the living being to the universe itself. Creative activity shapes an artwork as the centre of dynamic processes that organizes chaos by words, sounds, colours, bodily movements, and others. Colours and sounds make frames of painting and music. Music becomes an open structure that permeates and is permeated by the world developing rhythmical relationships of sonic territories. Refrain wards off chaos by creating a rhythm, tempo, melody and creates a musical frame for musical territory. It shapes the vibration of milieus into harmony.

We are not saying that the refrain is the origin of music or that music begins with it. It is not really known when music begins. The refrain is rather the means of preventing music, warding it off, or forgoing it. But music exists because the refrain also exists, because music takes up the refrain, lays hold of it as content in a form of expression because it forms a block with it in order to take it somewhere else (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 300).

Refrain gives music territory and brings together sights, sounds, rhythms, and material objects in organized-sounding totality. However, music is an escape from the refrain ; music intensifies the refrain by creating new forms and shapes, new sounds. That, what is deterritorialized from the refrain, now is reterritorialized as music. Music is not only self-sufficient sonic territory marked by the circulation of the refrain, but also territory open to the outside, and it develops as “deterritorialization”—the territory of music embraces any field of activity that conforms to rhythmic recomposition—the social field, the organic and the natural world.

By moving, colouring, and sounding, rhythm establishes territories of artworks. Rhythm governs the body to the implacable movements of the universe itself and transmits force through every structure of performance or dance. Art and philosophy are rooted in chaos. They can both ride the waves of a vibratory universe without directions, and they enlarge the universe by framing affects and concepts. “Art takes a bit of chaos in a frame in order to form a composed chaos that becomes sensory, or from which it extracts a chaoid sensation as variety” (Deleuze & Guattari 1994, 206).

In shaping and framing artworks, two kinds of rhythms express themselves. Cadence-repetition, where conformity and the symmetry of lines and spaces take physical place and remain arithmetically static, is seen in spatial territorialization and the regular division of architecture ; and rhythm-repetition, where the vibration of rhythm to be more oriented temporally, includes inequalities and different rhythmic events of music based on internal intensities and characterizes the rhythm of living's evolution. In “Difference and Repetition,” Deleuze notes that studies on rhythm confirm a duality between arithmetic symmetry, which refers back to scale and is static and cubic, and geometric symmetry, based on proportion, appears in a living “evolution” as vital, positive, and active movements. With no frame made by rhythm, there can be no art : colours and sounds refrain artwork, and, in such a way, painting or composition becomes a centre of a milieu and separates from chaos. Rhythm's capacity of framing and separating from chaos relates to different situations, including a time of emergency. If it is possible to control and predict rhythmic manifestations, it is possible to localize chaotic activities. “A mistake in speed, rhythm, or harmony would be catastrophic because it would bring back the forces of chaos, destroying both creator and creation” (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, 311). Human life, art and science, sociality and nature function and change in fluid and interdependent conditions : milieu, rhythm, becoming expressive, and taking territory.

Conclusions

Philosophical approaches to rhythm and stability are diverse depending on the explored theoretical stances : for Husserl, the centre of stability is an intentional “I,” rhythm is experienced by the lived body, and surroundings relate to intentions of subjectivity. For Deleuze, stability is formed by refrain and rhythm, establishing a centre and territory by separation from chaos. In contrast to Husserl, Deleuze & Guattari's characterization of rhythm is integrated with interpretations of art, society, nature, and philosophy and is rooted in nonhuman forces emphasizing the cosmic and natural dimensions of the philosophical environment to metaphysical vitalism than to phenomenology. Contrary to the phenomenological approach, coming from the “I-perspective,” the postmodernity of Deleuze & Guattari excludes the dominant role of the subject and develops self-generated functions of rhythm. In a situation of a pandemic disaster, both these philosophical approaches are valuable. Husserl's phenomenology focuses more on the inclusion of subjectivity in the formation of stability in the world. For Husserl, the world's stability is grounded in intentional activities. At the same time, Deleuze & Guattari's philosophy gives the reversed view : overcoming pandemic time is based on situations to be “in-between” milieus where the capacity of becoming other, expressiveness, and taking of territories maintain distance from chaotic forces. For Deleuze & Guattari, stability is established by separating chaos where human activities and forces of milieu (rhythm and refrain) frame directional spaces.

The difference between Husserl and Deleuze & Guattari is seen in various aspects : in using concepts and themes, in interpretations of human beings and life, in the way of thinking, and in creating different philosophical environments. Deleuze & Guattari do not accept a phenomenological environment where the subject is the centre of belonging territories but include the philosophy of rhythm in nonhuman forces of the cosmos that insinuate in different realms and various life forms. They cover human and animal life, art, the cosmos, and nature. The phenomenology of rhythm starts from rhythm as given in experience, relating to an internal constitution of humans and its intentions directed to the surrounding environment. The experience of rhythm characterizes the primordial faculty of the human : to be inside of the self and simultaneously percept an environment around themselves, making a relatively limited horizon of spatiotemporal situations.

However, such concepts from Deleuze & Guattari's philosophy as a centre of stability, territory, becoming other resonate with Husserl's approach to the self as an intentional centre, forming meaningful worlds, the openness of horizons. Correlations of these concepts maintain rhythmic structures, including humans, the world around them, and one's own world in different ways.

Both phenomenological and postmodern thinking open three comparative aspects for the development of philosophical interdisciplinarity : 1) the formation of rhythmic horizons and territories ; 2) viewing territories in the context of fluxing space and time ; 3) a transformative function of territories and an openness to new interpretations and the future. Rhythm frames boundaries of its belonging territory and transforms and decontextualizes it to create a new one and migrate to another territory. Flexible attention to processes governed by the current emergency shows how human intentions change in forming new typical meaningful horizons and how processes in the future are foreseen.

Rhythm is a fundamental component of being, and existence makes it possible to seek a standard explanation of sociality, human, philosophy, art, and nature, showing the organic connection between a person's internal constitution and outer environment. It is also proven in the pandemic situation, which changes the rhythm of life and determines communication and different processes of belonging to surroundings. For Husserl and Deleuze, reality is changeable. Their views, so different in the basic stances, justify a common sense that rhythm ensures the safety and strengthens the relations between the centre and peripheral, between similarly corresponding elements.

Bibliography

1. Deleuze Gilles (1994), Difference and Repetition, New York : Columbia University Press.
2. Deleuze Gilles, Guattari Félix (1987), A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London : University of Minnesota Press.
3. Gadamer Hans-Georg (1989), Truth and Method, (2^nd ed.), London : Sheed & Ward.
4. Husserl Edmund (1964), Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
5. Husserl Edmund (1982), Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology, The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
6. Ihde Don (1976), Listening and Voice. A Phenomenology of Sound, Athens : Ohio University Press.
7. Kivle Ineta (2021), “Book Review : Cheyne P., Hamilton A., Paddison M. (eds.), Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics, New York : Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-19-934778-0”, Horizon, 10 (1), St. Petersburg State University, p. x.
8. Kivle Ineta (2020), “Choice to Be Happy : Rhythm of Flourishing in Aristotle's, The Nicomachean Ethics and Hanna Arendt's, The Human Condition”, [in :] K. Boudouris (ed.), The Possibility of Eudaimonia (Happiness and Human Flourishing) in the World Today, Athens : Ionia Publications, pp. 139-148.
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10. Kivle Ineta (2018), “Auditory Phenomena and Human Life : Phenomenological Experience”, [in :] S. Smith, J. S. Smith & D. Verducci (eds.), Eco-Phenomenology : Life, Human Life, Post-Human Life in the Harmony of the Cosmos, Springer International Publishing AG, pp. 367-373
11. Michon Pascal (2017), Elements of Rhythmology : Antiquity, Paris : Rhuthmos.
12. Welton Donn (ed.) (1999), The Essential Husserl. Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, USA : Indiana University Press.

[1] Sub-concepts such as measure, number, or periodicity were introduced in the definition of rhythm only by Plato during the first half of the 4^th century. Before Plato, rhythm never denoted the order of a sequence of time but meant the temporary disposition of something flowing, a form that was itself changing during its performance. The Platonic approach to rhythm is concerned with education, the constitution of person, society, state control, the sacred, and mathematical order : The Republic, The Laws, Philebus and Timaeus. Rhythm is viewed as a human reflection of Heavenly numbers in Plotinus' Enneads. Aristotle writes : “all rhythm is measured by definite movement.”

[2] Pascal Michon, founder of the website www.rhuthmos.eu and the publication “Rhuthmos”, is the author of three volumes of research, “Elements of Rhythmology” (2018–2019), and many other publications about rhythm including analyses of Deleuze & Guattari and ancient philosophers.

Peter CHEYNE, Andy HAMILTON, Max PADDISON (eds.), The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics

Ineta Kivle — 2022-10-10T11:15:00Z

Sommaire

P. Cheyne, A. Hamilton, M. Paddison (eds.), The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics, New York, Oxford University Press, 2019 – ISBN 978-0-19-934778-0

This review has already been published in Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology 10 (1), 2021 : II, pp 312-319.

Abstract : The review provides an outline of the collective monograph The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics, edited by Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton and Max Paddison, published by Oxford University Press, 2019. Concept of rhythm is analysed from different perspectives—philosophical, musicological and psychological. It considers a multidisciplinary approach and also includes both analytic and continental philosophical traditions. Rhythm is viewed as a pulse that is going through various metric structures including particular pieces of music, paintings, examples of poetry and philosophy. Twenty eight authors from the entire world discuss rhythm and specify definitions of rhythm. They try to give answers on crucial questions uniting experienced rhythm in philosophy and arts, thus giving an important contribution to rhythm studies. The book is organised thematically and based on different aspects of rhythm manifestations. The main questions of the research are as follows : How is rhythm experienced ? Does rhythm necessarily involve movement ? Why rhythm is so deeply rooted in human ? How can static configurations be rhythmic ? How does a rhythmic structure change from a stable pat-tern to a flexible texture ? All these questions concern two interwoven issues common for the volume in general : immanence of rhythm to arts and human experience of it.

Keywords : rhythm, movement, time, space, art, philosophy, multidisciplinarity, aesthetics, experience.

1. Introduction

The collective monograph The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics concerns different philosophical approaches and includes both continental and analytic traditions. The current review does not analyse all its chapters in detail but focuses more on the phenomenological point of view. The review is structured as follows : it gives a brief introduction on the concept of rhythm in philosophy ; marks out the contribution of the current volume ; provides an outline on the content of its parts and concludes on the importance of research of rhythm in interdisciplinary philosophy.

Studies of rhythm relate to different spheres, but simultaneously they form a complex application of appropriate and encompassing philosophical technique. Theoretical approach to rhythm transforms and changes together with the conceptual ambitions ; therefore, they broaden the scope of the concept's definition in correspondence with the explored philosophical stances. Multidisciplinary approach deepens understanding of rhythm and shows the role of rhythm in the world around us, it gives new opportunities for philosophical reflections and makes human activities clearer. In general, rhythm donates to metre, sequence, repetition, order, measured time and space, thus showing quantitative assessments. Differently from mathematically measurable world philosophy views immanence of rhythm and opens the deepest levels of human constitution.

In the history of philosophy, the rhythm research is characterised by fluctuations, it intensifies periodically, but then subsides again [1]. In recent decades rhythm research has been activated, and several volumes, dedicated to rhythmology, have been written. French philosopher Pascal Michon [2] has created an interdisciplinary research network : RHUTHMOS that could be considered as one of the most effective contributions to contemporary rhythm studies.

Rhythm studies related to phenomenology have not yet been widely developed, except for some doctoral thesis on phenomenology of rhythm [3] and some recent investigations in phenomenology of rhythm [4]. The reason of it may be in the fact that Husserl does not write about rhythm directly. However, phenomenology gives an impulse for various interpretations of rhythm : rhythms of intersubjective communication ; flux of internal time, time-objects ; rhythms of internal constitution of man and rhythms of surrounding worlds ; bodily and sensory perception of rhythm, etc. Phenomenology of rhythm is based on direct experience therefore giving feasibility for analyses of how rhythm is given, how its meanings are constituted and how rhythm differs from other meaningful phenomena. The contribution of Anna Yampolskaja [5] could be mentioned there. Analysing Henri Maldiney's [6] views on aesthetical experience, she concerns the concept of rhythm and binds it with sensory perception that gives access to the world as a whole and also shows sensing as a holistic level of intersubjective communication.

2. Outline of chapters

The multidisciplinary research Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics is dedicated to various kinds of arts and views them in perspective of rhythm concept binding it with such notions as experienced time, space, sensations and body. The volume editors : Peter Cheyne [7], Andrey Hamilton [8] and Max Paddison [9] stimulate a multidisciplinary examination of particular manifestations of rhythm and focus on rhythm in its relationship between everyday embodied experience, on the one hand, and the specific experience of music, dance, and poetry, on the other hand. Therefore, the main direction of the content of the volume is formed by binding internal rhythm of artworks with human experience. The volume is composed of five sections written by twenty eight researchers around the world from universities of various philosophical traditions : University of Dayton, Durham University, University of Leeds, University of Oxford, Harvard University, University of Sydney, University of London, Trinity College Dublin, University of Liverpool, Lancaster University, Uppsala University, Ohio State University, etc.

The introductory part Dialogue on Rhythm shows that philosophical knowledge is always dialogical where not one view prevails. Debate between five Dramatis Personae (Skepticus, Dynamicus, Metaphysicus, Analyticus, Vitalia) is left open : rhythm is characterized exploring different philosophical approaches and viewed as an order within a human body, an intentional phenomenon, a movement-in-time, a movement-in-space, etc. At the beginning of the dialogue the discussion turns to the notion of intentionality :

Musical rhythm is intentional and apparently meaningful. But it seems obvious to me that there are non-intentional meaningless rhythms, such as a train running on a track, a heartbeat, or the drip of a leaky tap. We might call these natural rhythms and distinguish them from human rhythms like music and dance, without denying that making rhythms is natural to us. (Hamilton, 2019, 17)

In any case, rhythm is viewed as a movement of different dispositions and capacities. The conversation between Dramatis Personae tries to give clear meanings of used terms—in a Socratic way they maintain a dynamic dialogue trying to find the most apprehensive and precise definitions. They discuss proto-rhythm, movement in music, meaningful order, entrainment, rhythm as the order of movement, human movement, etc., thus accentuating problems going through the following parts and chapters of the book.

The first section of the volume Movement and Stasis shows how rhythm is experienced through senses—experience of rhythm is also an experience of movement, and entity on which rhythm is founded form relationships with rhythm itself. The second section Emotion and Expression considers a relational perception of rhythm and views the inner constitution of human rhythm and its empathic relations to both—classical as well as popular music. The third section Entrainment and the Social Dimension covers such questions as social origin of rhythm and a neuro-psychological approach to rhythm. The latest part of the volume Reading Rhythm focuses on literature. Comparing rhythm in different forms of literature it is seen how important the domain of rhythm remains in metrical imagination of the reader even in reading of abstract poetry.

The fourth part Time and Experience : Subjective and Objective Rhythm binds rhythm with concepts of experience of time and space, music, graphic arts, body and movement. This part of the volume concerns phenomenology directly ; therefore some chapters need a more detailed analysis. In chapter Time, Rhythm and Subjectivity. The Aesthetics of Duration Max Paddison analyses how experience of duration transforms in music, dance, literature, how rhythm is considered and how temporality is experienced within pattern of “rhythmicized duration.” Paddison bases on different philosophical interpretations of time : Newton's conception of absolute and mathematical time without relation to anything external. Bergson's duration as not measurable flux of experience. Kant's “insistence that time is not an attribute of the object but is something brought to it by the experiencing subject” (Paddison, 2019, 275). Husserl's conception of “flow” of time as a continuum uniting lived experience and temporal arts. Paddison turns to Bachelard's [10] dialectical phenomenology as a particular relevance to the temporal arts as well as to Deliege's [11] philosophy of experience of time as “dependent on the objects and events that occupy our consciousness.” (Paddison, 2019, 287). Paddison explores examples from Messianen's definition of rhythm as “the ordering of movement” that open rhythmical movements also in spatial continuum. In conclusion he binds rhythm with the hermeneutical and historical approach :

I have argued that rhythm needs to be understood not simply as an independent parameter but as a fundamentally structural dimension of the temporal arts. [..] I have also made the claim that our ideas of rhythm, seen in this larger context, are historical and metaphorical in character. (Paddison, 2019, 289)

The chapter, written by Salomé Jacob [12], Husserl's Model of Time-Consciousness, and the Phenomenology of Rhythm, examines a model of temporal consciousness of the experience of musical rhythm. She focuses on the question : How is it that one can-not think about rhythm in isolation from the temporal experience of it ? In accordance with Husserl's stances, rhythm is viewed as experienced in living present including flux of three phases : the retention, the primal impression and the protention, thus opening the rhythm of phenomenological time (Husserl, 1991). Exploring Husserl's well-known example of listening to melody, it is shown as a continuum of perception in listener's apprehension of temporal relations at each moment. “Husserl's purpose is thus two-fold : to account for the experience of temporally extended objects and also to account for the experience of one's ongoing stream of experiences” (Jacob, 2019, 298). In experience of rhythm and melody a double intentionality synchronizes with pre-reflective level of bodily perception and a tacit sense of selfhood. Bodily move-ments are spatial and temporal :

Admittedly, Husserl's analysis of time cannot do all of the work. […] Bodily movements follow the expected sonic event and variations in the musical rhythm entail an implicit re-evalution of the bodily movements. This highlights the particularly rich and com-plex phenomenology of rhythm, in which temporality interacts with the body. (Jacob, 2019, 305)

Jason Gaiger [13] in chapter Pictorial Experience and the Perception of Rhythm gives a view on how a painting may have a rhythm. He compares rhythmic temporal patterns of sounds with rhythmic spatial patterns of colours : “However, since reference to time is definitional for the concept of rhythm as it is employed elsewhere, we risk losing our grip on the meaning of the term if we apply it to spatial phenomena without any temporal reference” (Gaiger, 2019, 311). For argumentation of spatial rhythm in graphic arts Gaiger explores examples of art history—paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, Sonia Delaunay [14], Raphael, and connects them with the vision research, that is : a process of viewer's observation of artwork, a determinate sequence of viewing, eye-tracking studies, etc. Gaiger unites the pictorial structure and the perception of it by temporal experience, thus showing an aspect of methodological approach to rhythm studies—based on bilateral relations between work of art and human experience of it.

3. Conclusion

Binding theoretical approaches with practices, transformative and fluid processes with concrete patterns of rhythm, it is seen that two interwoven notions are common for all parts and chapters of the volume : rhythm immanence to art, on the one hand, and its temporal and spatial experience, on the other hand. The greatest contribution of the volume is its multidisciplinary approach—it unites philosophers, psychologists, musicians, literary theorists for opening of plural perspectives of rhythm research, and shows that the borders of philosophical studies should be revised and new areas for philosophical reflections about reality should be found.

References

Al-Saji, A. (2002). Rhythms of the Body : A Study of Sensation, Time and Intercorporeity in the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Emory University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Cheyne, P., Hamilton, A., & Paddison, M. (Eds.). (2019). The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music,Poetics. New York : Oxford University Press.

Gaiger, J. (2019). Pictorial Experience and the Perception of Rhythm. In The Philosophy of Rhythm:Aesthetics, Music, Poetics (307–331). New York : Oxford University Press.

Hamilton, A. (Ed.) (2019). Dialogue on Rhythm : Entrainment and the Dynamic Thesis. In The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics (15–43). New York : Oxford University Press.

Husserl, E. (1991). The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Jacob, S. (2019). Husserl's Model of Time Consciousness, and the Phenomenology of Rhythm. In The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics (291–307). New York : Oxford University Press.

Kivle, I. (2020). Choice to Be Happy : Rhythm of Flourishing in Aristotle's, The Nicomachean Ethics and Hanna Arendt's, The Human Condition. In Boudouris, K. (Ed.), The Possibility of Eudaimonia (Happiness and Human Flourishing) in The World Today (139–148). Athens : IAGP.

Kūle, M. (2002). Rhythm and Eternal Recurrence. In Phenomenology and Culture (98–107). Riga : University of Latvia.

Kūle, M. (2011). Logos and life : Understanding of Rhythm. In Tymieniecka, A-T. (Ed.), Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-cosmic Horizons of Antiquity (675–683). London, New York : Springer.

Paddison, M. (2019). Time, Rhythm, and Subjectivity : The Aesthetics of Duration. In The Philosophy of Rhythm : Aesthetics, Music, Poetics (272–291). New York : Oxford University Press.

Verhage, (2008) F. The Rhythm of Embodied Encounters : Intersubjectivity in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology. McGill University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Wiscus, J. (2015). The Rhythm of Thought : Art, Literature, and Music after Merleau-Ponty. University of Chicago Press.

Yampolskaja, A. (2018). The Problematization of the “Aesthetical Experience” in Henri Maldiney's Phe-nomenology. Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology, 7 (2), 414–429.

[1] The notion of rhythm is known from Ancient times. At the beginning, it was used as a technical term characterised by such sub-concepts as measure, number, periodicity. Ancient philosophers highlighted the main directions of philosophy of rhythm : the order of a sequence of time ; temporary disposition of something flowing ; a form that was itself changing during its manifestations ; harmony and disharmony of internal and outer rhythms ; rhythm of music and speech ; rhythm of body and soul. In Ancient philosophy rhythm is mentioned as something flowing and changing (Heraclitus). Rhythm was viewed in relations with physical objects (Democritus) that gives impulse for philosophy of nature developed by Diderot and Goethe, later by Nietzsche, then Deleuze. Pythagoras and Platonic paradigm views rhythm in mathematical and universal aspect–rhythmic sequence of time-length is organised by number. Aristotle develops a poetic aspect of rhythm and gives impulse for rhythm analysis in mimetic structures (Kivle, 2020). From the middle of 18th century, the concept of rhythm embraces philosophy, theory, medicine, art, language, natural sciences, linking rhythm to mathematical and numerical relationships, comparing music with rhythm in nature. Rhythm was shown to be documentable, visually depictable, and employable in identifying and developing processes by creating technological tools that show rhythms of mind-body interactions. The several devices have been invented : Carl Ludwig's kymograph (1846), for measuring of variation of blood pressure ; Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph (1857) ; Helmholz' myograph (1850) for muscle twitches.

[2] Pascal Michon—PhD , works at Éducation Nationale in Paris. He does research in Cultural History, Ethics, Aesthetics and Metaphysics, Conceptual History of Rhythm.

[3] Two dissertations are published in data base Proquest Dissertation Publishing (Al-Saji, 2002 ; Verhage, 2008).

[4] See (Yampolskaja, 2018 ; Kūle, 2011 ; Kūle, 2002 ; Wiscus, 2015).

[5] Anna Yampolskaja — DSc in Philosophy, Leading Research Fellow at National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow.

[6] Henri Maldiney (1912–2013) — the French phenomenologist, devoted his works to art and mad-ness, and devised a phenomenology of feeling.

[7] Peter Cheyne — Associate Professor at Shimane University, and Visiting Fellow in Philosophy at Durham University. He leads two international projects, one on the Aesthetics of Perfection and Imperfection, and the other on the 17th- to 19th-century Philosophy of the Life Sciences.

[8] Andy Hamilton — Professor of philosophy at Durham University, UK. He specialises in aesthetics, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and history of 19th- and 20th-century philosophy, especially Wittgenstein.

[9] Max Paddison — Emeritus Professor of Music Aesthetics at the University of Durham.He works in critical theory, philosophy, contemporary music and popular music.

[10] Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) — French philosopher, the author of Dialectic of Duration (2000), The Poetics of Space (1957)

[11] Célestin Deliège (1922–2010) was a professor of musicology at Le Conservatoire royal de Liège in Belgium.

[12] Salomé Jacob — PhD, Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Durham.

[13] Jason Gaiger — Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Ruskin school of Art.

[14] Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) — French artist, the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964.