Musikk og religion som estetisk erfaring. Et augustinsk perspektiv

Abstract

In this article, I reflect on how music and religion meet in aesthetic experience, and how thinking responds to this encounter. The way of thinking takes the form of an interpretation of key elements in Augustine’s description of his musical experiences in Confessions (Confessiones). This article is not a philological-historical interpretation of Augustine, but an attempt to think with Augustine today. Therefore, the article culminates in a reflection on the self as a place where music and religion meet. If we place the aesthetic experience of music within a theory of subjectivity, it shows that man himself becomes the place where the drama between good and evil in the meeting between religion and music takes place. With Augustine, one can interpret one’s own musical-religious experiences even today, and with Augustine we see the importance of a theological reflection on music that is sceptical of how music can be (mis)used in religious contexts. According to Augustine, thinking about the relationship between music and religion takes the form of descriptions of aesthetic experiences. They cannot be universalized into an abstract theory of the relationship between music and religion. Thinking must therefore go into the concrete experience to understand how music and religion respond to each other in human subjectivity.