The Philosopher's Touch

Renowned philosopher and prominent French critic François Noudelmann engages the musicality of Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Roland Barthes, all of whom were amateur piano players and acute lovers of the medium. Piano playing was a crucial art for these thinkers, yet their writing on the topic has been rarely studied, for the musings are scant, implicit, or discordant with each philosopher's oeuvre. Noudelmann recovers and integrates these perspectives, showing that the manner in which these philosophers played, the composers they adored, and the music they chose reveals critical thinking styles and patterns. Noudelmann positions the physical and theoretical practice of music as a dimension underpinning and resonating with the philosophical outlook of Sartre, Nietzsche, and Barthes. By reading their thought in light of their music, he introduces new formulations of their trajectories and a richer sense of their lived, embodied experiences, heightening the multiple registers of being and the relationship between philosophy and the senses that informed so much of their work. A careful reader of music, Noudelmann maintains an elegant command of the texts under his gaze and appreciates the discursive points of musical and philosophical scholarship, especially research conducted in the past few decades.