Tonality was a central concept and practice for Schoenberg, informing compositions thatspan the periods most often characterized as tonal, atonal and twelve-tone. Through to about 1908 Schoenberg’s musical language is based on tonality as largely understood and practised by Brahms and Wagner, and by composers closer to Schoenberg’s generation, including Wolf, Pfitzner, Zemlinsky, Reger, Mahler and Strauss. Subsequent works from about 1909 to 1921 avoid standard forms and harmonies but feature many tonally oriented gestures and phrases. Many of his twelve-tone compositions also contain structural traces of tonality, such as what he thought of as ‘tonic’ and ‘dominant’ forms of the row. Several of Schoenberg’s works after 1934 show him yielding to an urge to (in his own words) ‘compose tonal music’.

Completed in 1905 as one of the earliest large-scale works that Webern produced under Arnold Schoenberg’s tutelage, the Langsamer Satz for string quartet has been deemed ‘disarmingly conventional’ (James Beale), as no more than an ‘exercise’ (Walter Kolneder) through which the young composer honed his compositional craft. Challenging this mode of interpretation, this chapter attends to what is perhaps the movement’s most salient feature: its exuding sense of lyricism. Through a combination of voice-leading and transformational perspectives, it is argued that the lyricism pervading the work is rooted in an audacious dual-tonic practice. The movement’s tonal disposition is further illuminated with reference to contemporaneous debates that erupted in post-Riemannian music-theoretical discourse, especially Georg Capellen’s conception of Doppelklänge (‘hybrid chords’). The picture emerging from these considerations is that the Langsamer Satz features compositional strategies that seem rather unusual for an ‘exercise’, and which cannot be explained with reference to Schoenberg’s musical thought alone.

A stylistic shibboleth of musical romanticism and early modernism, the breakthrough figures as a salient expressive device in many of Webern’s tonal compositions. This chapter sheds light on the aesthetic function that energetic thresholds fulfil in Webern’s early work, through a close analysis of the Piano Quintet (1907). Described by Theodor W. Adorno as an ‘amalgamation of Brahmsian with Wagnerian elements’, the quintet engages a complex dialectic between ‘formal’ and ‘material’ meaning strata. Linking this dialectic to what is termed the ‘agitating impulse’, a motivic idea set up in the opening bars that adamantly strives towards its resolution yet which is consistently frustrated, this chapter construes the various waves pervading the work not as emancipatory gestures but corporeal manifestations of a subcutaneous anxiety. As such, it is suggested that the quintet offers an original contribution to ‘Romantic’ sonata form practices, and a novel interpretation of the breakthrough.

In the Republic, Socrates sets up rational self-rule, archein hautou, as the ideal state, with what we might call rational other-rule as second best (590d3-5). This paper will focus on the role of dialectic in the process of establishing self-rule from two perspectives: an agent having been raised by an educational program under ideal political conditions, focusing on the Republic; and an agent trying to engage in philosophical self-improvement under non-ideal political conditions, focusing on the Hippias Major. This may be seen as a contrast between a top-down and a bottom-up approach to establishing rational self-rule. My thesis is that, in both cases, an intermediate or provisional form of rational self-rule needs to be established in order to achieve full self-rule, and that, in both approaches, the provisional state of rational self-rule shares some important features of the final state of rational self-rule, what we might call wisdom, but these are different features in the two cases.

This section of the book takes a holistic approach by exploring elements of the compositional lingua franca that catalyzed a new musical poetics. Chapter 7 identifies approximately eight parameters (e.g., text-setting, cadences, and harmony) that in tandem can be used to create dramatic arcs.

In the 1980s and 90s in psychology, many cross-cultural comparisons were made concerning individualism and collectivism with questionnaires and experiments. The largest number of them compared “collectivistic” Japanese with “individualistic” Americans. This chapter reviewed 48 such empirical comparisons and found that Japanese were no different from Americans in the degree of collectivism. Both questionnaire studies and experimental studies showed essentially the same pattern of results. Many researchers who believed in “Japanese collectivism” suspected flaws in those empirical studies. However, none of the suspected flaws was consistent with empirical evidence. For example, although it was suspected that “Japanese collectivism” was not supported because college students provided data as participants, the studies with non-student adults did not support this common view either. It is thus unquestionable that as a whole the empirical studies disproved the reality of “Japanese collectivism.”

The release of the Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, and Fender Stratocaster in the early 1950s has led that era to assume the status of a “golden age” of electric guitar design and production. This chapter seeks to broaden the terms according to which we understand this pivotal moment through multiple lenses. First, it documents an earlier turning point in electric guitar history in the mid to late 1930s, when the Spanish-body electric ascended to prominence over its Hawaiian-style counterpart. Next, it examines the prehistory of the commercial solid body through the preproduction prototypes built by Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Paul Bigsby. Third, the chapter highlights the continued importance of hollow body electrics throughout the 1950s, in conjunction with the early years of rock ‘n’ roll. Lastly, it foregrounds the impact of low-cost electric guitars produced by companies such as Harmony and Kay, which helped make the instrument into a more accessible commodity.

This chapter argues that certain conventional discourses of sustainability, along with related frameworks for intergenerational ethics, create conceptual barriers to realizing the goals of genuine sustainability and intergenerational flourishing. Early Confucianism provides a model of intergenerational ethics that may better align with these goals. In particular, early Confucianism offers a relationally grounded ethics that conceptualizes community diachronically and emphasizes the importance of building and sustaining harmonious, flourishing human communities over time. These Confucian ideas resonate with relational and communitarian approaches to intergenerational ethics and sustainability, which can helpfully supplement existing frameworks for intergenerational ethics by emphasizing shared values and concerns, including commitments to common intergenerational projects.

This paper revisits the concept of reasonabilism, which subsumes a form of reconfiguration of an holistic conception of consciousness in a manner that ties contingent rational expressions or the principle of consistency to corresponding enabling sets of affectivities and conatus (degrees of beneficence or their negation as contained in volitional states) and vice versa, such that they become two sides of the same coin. The paper explores the basis of reasonability and reasonabilism in African thought, showing that African thought is not as long on the formal radial scale as it is deep on the substantive relational scale, including the relationalities and sociality of pure consciousness (self-reflecting intensionality, its representations and levels of reality) and the implications of these for the scale and depth of conceptions of justice, especially intergenerational justice as it relates to the environment and development generally. Contemporary Africa faces the challenge of retaining and deepening the conatal depth of beneficence in its Indigenous philosophical resources and heritage while expanding its radial of consistency to meet the global challenges of looming environmental disaster and the question of environmental sustainability, poverty, disease, etc. This paper also tries to point towards the necessary reconceptualization and reinvigorations that would further enrich African thought along the required lines.

Wagner’s early compositional training is seldom examined, perhaps because of his unambiguous claim in 1851 to be an autodidact, taught only by ‘life, art and myself’. Yet Wagner’s work with Christian Müller and particularly with Theodor Weilig on early works and in abstract skills (notably counterpoint) reveal various dependencies. Wanger’s shifting attitude towards this period of training sits alongside his choice of more public mentors, in Beethoven and Weber, whose works he studied and arranged.

“Interface” in present usage is a modern concept whose roots lie in physical science and engineering disciplines. For serendipitous reasons it happens to work well as a conceptual tool for structuring Sun Tzu’s approach to leadership topics, starting with the political level (the ruler) and extending in the military realm down to the level of common soldiers. That is the focus of Theme #13.

Many of the justifications for the electoral college focus on maintaining the harmony and cohesion of the Republic. Upon closer scrutiny, however, we find that the electoral college does not contain the results of fraud and accidental circumstances within states. Instead, it magnifies their consequences for the outcome nationally. Direct election, by contrast, would create disincentives for fraud and recounts. Similarly, the electoral college does not produce concurrent majorities around the country and force winning candidates to moderate their stances to appeal successfully to all segments of society and all geographic locations. Equally problematic is the view that victory in the electoral college ensures presidents effective coalitions for governing. Moreover, the electoral college does not produce compromise within states, and it is fundamentally different from constitutional provisions that require supermajorities to take positive action. The electoral college produces neither majority-vote victories for presidents nor mandates for their governing. It is also not a bastion of federalism. Direct election of the president would not diminish the role of state and local parties and officials or the nominating conventions, and national standards for elections are already in place and not to be feared.

In this transitional chapter, Chen proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP): “Politeness is the judgement of a behavior – both linguistic and otherwise – that it is appropriate in context for the purpose of harmony.” Appropriateness, further, is defined in terms of the position of the speaker and hearer; the maintaining of face, and the avoidance of friction between all parties involved. Chen then moves to the proposal of a general politeness theory based on Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation into it notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The theory – Brown and Levinson extended (B&L-E) – is a set of causality relations: waht a speaker does (either benefitting or hurting) to face (either self-face or other-face) leads to a particular type of politeness or impoliteness. The benefitting of other-face, for instance, often leads to the evaluation of politeness. The benefitting of self-face, on the other hand, may (or may not) result in a judgement of impoliteness to other. Of the two models, Chen argues, MCP is a cultural specification of B&L-E. His view is therefore that there should be a universal theory of politeness such as B&L-E, which is capable of subsuming under it culture-specific models such as MCP.

In Chapter 2, Chen takes his readers to the roots of Chinese face and politeness: the social structure of hierarchy and the social value of harmony. Both features are traced to Confucianism, a codification of a society in which every member knows the rung they are at on the ladder of the social hierarchy and is expected to behave accordingly. To keep such a society stable, the notion of harmony is championed by Chinese philosophers, most notably Confucius. To promote harmony, Chen demonstrates, Confucius prescribes an elaborate system of behavioral rules for people of all walks of life. The monarch and the ruling class should be benevolent, subordinates loyal; parents should be caring; children filial; husbands should be responsible, wife faithful. Finally, every member of the society should strive for ren, which includes all that is good, and treat others with deference and respect. Lastly, Chen argues that the notions of hierarchy and harmony have been remarkably stable across the ages and appear to be present in contemporary Chinese-speaking societies outside mainland China: Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In this book, Rong Chen provides a thorough discussion of Chinese politeness and argues for universality in politeness theorizing. Based on in-depth analyses, the author dichotomizes Chinese face into Face1 and Face2 – the former referring to the person and the latter to the persona of the speaker – and proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP), with the notion of harmony at the center. Chinese politeness thusly conceived – the author argues – should be seen as a cultural-specification of a universal theory of politeness dubbed Brown and Levinson Extended (B&L-E), a model that anchors with Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation of the notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The author then applies MCP and B&L-E to the analyses of Chinese politeness, both diachronically and synchronically, and to comparisons of politeness between Chinese and other languages. The results demonstrate that B&L-E is capable of accounting for variation as well as consistency across time and space, differences as well as similarity between linguacultures, and fluidity as well as stability in meaning making in authentic interaction. The monograph hence presents a rare challenge to politeness research and pragmatics, which have emphasized particularism at the expense of universalism.

This chapter highlights the affinities between moderation, modesty, and humility. It uses the example of the Swedish term lagom, which connotes a certain form of humility and respect for limits.

This conclusion draws together the central themes of the book, laying out how George and the Irish Land War helped to further drive liberals, conservatives, and socialists towards an organicist utilitarian politics. It also offers a brief summary of the subsequent trajectory of the land question and some of its orientating politics in Ireland, Britain, and the Unitec States. The conclusion discusses why the late nineteenth century remains such a critical moment for contemporary discussion of liberalism and democracy.