A Scale of Humanity

Cavell on Mahler and Wittgenstein

Abstract

There is no doubt that Ludwig Wittgenstein hated the music of Gustav Mahler. One cannot avoid his abusive remarks on the composer, as he says that “obviously it took a string of very rare talents to produce this bad music” and ponders caustically whether Mahler should have burnt his symphonies or else should have done himself violence so he would not write them at all. Yet one ought not to dismiss Mahler too easily as merely another symptom, alien and uncongenial in Wittgenstein’s eyes, of cultural decline, of the disintegration of the resemblances which unify a culture’s way of life. Wittgenstein may have disliked Mahler’s music, but disliking may still leave open the question about, and the need to come to terms with, one’s urge to misunderstand, something that Stanley Cavell repeatedly flagged as a site for philosophy.