Philosophical Aurality

Abstract

The Notion of Aurality, by Going Beyond the Usual Distinction Between Written and Oral Language, Raises Questions About the nature of listening while reading. The academic rehabilitation of orality in relation to writing has certainly made way for audible performing arts. It has also led to reassessments of cultures in all continents and archipelagoes that favor oral transmission. However, this attention to the auditory should not cause us to forget an orality inside writing, which comes not only from its inspiration but also from its very material. Let us therefore follow Friedrich Nietzsche's injunction to remove the plugs from our ears (332) and forget the legend of ideas being silent, abstracted from any sonic reality. Even if we do not use the expression “oral philosophy,” we must remember that many discourses since antiquity, especially those of Socrates, have been oral performances. Our reading of ancient philosophy should therefore be sensitive to this acoustic dimension. But Western philosophy has constantly been suspicious of hearing, probably because the ear is always suspected of passivity, compared to an eye that objectifies reality. Since the ears have no lids to interrupt perception, they allow the sonic matter of the world to pass through without the subject's being able to control it. Consequently, the history of metaphysics presents a series of interdictions against sounds, and warnings about their enchanting power and their betrayal of the meaning they are supposed to carry. The desire to channel and domesticate the anarchy of sounds reflects a philosophical malentendu: sound is both misheard and misunderstood.