Affect

Disclosing possible connections between music and ethics inevitably means dealing with and trying to understand musical affect more than analysing the structure of musical works. Music's affective and emotional character is able to introduce distortions that corrupt understanding and responsible action, it should be treated with great care and only by those who are educated and good, a section of the population from which musicians themselves, in Plato's ideal society, were usually excluded. The term contextualization as if the outside can be kept at a safe distance or simply regarded as an avoidable supplement always already affects the production and determination of a certain musical event. The Afghan Taliban in the late twentieth century all discerned correctly the fact that music has the potential to deeply affect human beings. The nature of this affect, however, has often been assumed to be situated on a transcendental level.