Keiji Nishitani, philosophe de l’École de Kyoto, a développé sa philosophie de la religion en étudiant les sermons allemands de Maître Eckhart à la lumière de la notion du « néant absolu » de Kitarô Nishida. Nishitani applique cette dernière à la « Déité » (Gotheit) exposée dans la prédication d’Eckhart, où il découvre l’idée d’un éveil à la subjectivité originaire dans l’âme humaine. Cet éveil ouvre à l’âme une liberté « en Dieu sans Dieu », accessible à la vraie intelligence religieuse, détachée de tout dualisme. Dans cette perspective, comment pouvons-nous intégrer la métaphysique que Maître Eckhart expose dans ses œuvres latines ? Dans le Commentaire de l’Évangile selon Jean, Eckhart déploie sa vision sur Dieu, Être-Un, « Principe sans principe », et il enseigne à « vivre » l’unité entre « être » et « connaître », en laquelle consiste la béatitude. Notre réflexion s’articule autour de l’idée de « vivre la vie ». Nous essayons d’unifier le détachement dans le « néant de la Déité » selon Nishitani et l’« Être illimité » selon le commentaire biblique, de manière à représenter la pensée eckhartienne comme une synergie de la spéculation métaphysique et de la pratique existentielle pour expérimenter le Transcendant dans notre vie immanente. / Keiji Nishitani, philosopher of the Kyoto School, developed his philosophy of religion, studying the German sermons of Meister Eckhart, in the light of the notion of “absolute nothingness” of Kitarô Nishida. He applies that notion to the “Godhead” (Gotheit) outlined in Eckhart’s preaching, where he discovers the idea of awakening to the elemental subjectivity in human soul. This awakening opens up to the soul a liberty “in Godwithout God”, accessible to the religious intelligence detached from all dualism. In this perspective, how can we integrate the metaphysics exposed by Eckhart in his Latin works ? In the Commentary on the Gospel of John, Eckhart explains his vision of God, Being-One, “Principle without principle”, and he teaches to “live” the unity between “being” and “knowing”, of which the beatitude consists. Our study revolves around the thinking on “live the life”. We try to unify the detachment in the “nothingness of the Godhead” according to Nishitani and the “unlimited Being” according to the biblical commentary, so as to show the Eckhartian thought as a synergy between metaphysic speculation and existential practice to experience the Transcendent in our immanent life.

Helmut Lachenmann’s theory of perception highlights musical moments that step out of a coherent stream of self-contained musical logic and challenges established categories of musical experience. The penultimate scene (No. 23: Shō) of Lachenmann’s »opera« The Little Match Girl (1991-96/2001) and the airy chords in the final section of his large ensemble work Concertini (2004/2005) arguably represent such moments of fundamental musical alterity in the composer’s recent output that are characterised by a specific auratic emphasis. Closer examination, however, suggests that these sections are also multiply mediated by self-references with the larger musical structure of these extensive works. This article provides a loosely connected series of discussions on how a balance between alterity and self-referentiality is achieved in these two examples. The discussions acknowledge the distinction between »extra-opus« and »intra-opus« references derived from cognitive science and music theory and focus on pitch organisation, sectional time structure, narrativity and interculturality. The Japanese mouth organ shō that figures prominently in the opera scene and, according to the composer, provides the »scale« for the concluding sounds in Concertini, without doubt symbolizes a moment of fundamental alterity due to its unique timbre, its unalienated sound and a basic articulation derived from the Japanese court music repertoire tōgaku. A detailed analysis of fingerings and pitch organisation, however, reveals a »double-coding« of Lachenmann’s material: on the »extra-opus« realm it refers to or »deconstructs« both Japanese and European musical conventions, on the »intra-opus« realm it connects to the framing scenes of the opera and forms part of a large-scale »cadence sound« that reconsiders the complete spectrum between pitched and unpitched sounds within the three closing scenes. The »utopian« shō-chords played by wind instruments in the final section of Concertini, in contrast, create a more fragmentary type of »cadence sound« due to their short durations, but nevertheless exert a »magnetic« attraction that temporarily assembles the heterogeneous »sound families« of the piece into transient sonic entities. A detailed overview of the sectional time structures reveals that in both cases the music follows a rather rigid sequence of proportions derived from Fibonacci series and the golden section, and includes several quasi symmetrical time layers. In both examples this time structure supports pivotal formal processes: in the shō-scene from the Little Match Girl it suggests a shift from the predominance of shō-sounds to their increasingly independent orchestral »resonances«, in Concertini the symmetrical position of the »shō-chords« within the final section emphasizes their cadential function and »magnetic« effect. The concluding discussions on narrativity and interculturality suggest that – partly in contrast to the preceding arguments of this essay – the analysed sections tend to subvert the conventional closure concept of a »cadence« and rather create open endings. The self-referential elements in the Little Match Girl’s construction of the shō and its inclusion in a re-invented type of »celestial mechanics« discloses non-essentialist, polyvalent strata of musical meaning that match Lachenmann’s concept of nonconventional musical narrativity and non-exploitative musical interculturality (a concept that he has critically discussed at length in a recent article). This is especially cogent when his shō-music is compared to other recent works for the Japanese mouth organ that recontextualize its sounds by »demythologization« in a much more obvious, arguably didactic manner. Finally, Lachenmann’s key idea of »liberated perception« is associated with this discussion on interculturality and traced back to moments in Keiji Nishitani’s philosophy – leaving this article open to further research.