The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers

by Eric Weiner

the possibility of aesthetic delight. A Buddhist would say we are not attached to the music but nor are we detached from it. A Christian mystic would say we maintain a “holy indifference” toward it. The idea is the same. True listening demands we postpone judgment. When we listen like this, hearing without judging, says Schopenhauer, we “feel positively happy.” I read that and am stunned. This is the first time I’ve seen Schopenhauer use the word “happy.” A glint of light. Music is not what I think it is, Schopenhauer tells me. It does not convey emotion. It conveys the essence, the container, of emotions without the content. When we listen to music, we perceive not a particular sadness or a particular joy but sadness itself and joy itself—“the extracted quintessence of these feelings,” says Schopenhauer. Sadness by itself isn’t painful. It is sadness about something that hurts. This is why we enjoy watching a tearjerker or listening to a Leonard Cohen song. Less invested in the drama, we experience