#settembrini

Recorded sound, which artificially preserves the unpreservable, increases the likelihood of listening without hearing, since it can be listened to at home or in motion, thus allowing us to reduce music to background activity and eliminate the possibility of total concentration - i.e., thought. The moral responsibility for this rests entirely with the individual human being, who can determine whether a recording is a means of instruction, rendering the music more familiar through repetition - the equivalent of rereading a passage in a book - or simply a means of distraction in the sense of the music played by the band in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, to which the philosopher Settembrini says, “The human being, unfortunately, has a tendency to imbue objects with moral authority, so as not to take the responsibility himself. Is a knife an instrument with which one can commit murder - therefore an immoral instrument - or is it an instrument with which bread can be cut and a fellow human being fed - therefore an instrument of human generosity? It is the human being’s application of it that determines its moral qualities.”

La coscienza mi diceva: «Tu sei pure un ignorante; gli studi li hai fatti in fretta; scienze non ne conosci, di filosofia ricordi soltanto che cosa è idea, nel latino sei corto, in italiano non scrivi abbastanza corretto: bisogna rifarti da capo. Andiamo dunque nell’università, dove ci ha tanti professori, che insegnano tante belle cose. Bisogna acquistare buone e sode cognizioni, e poi lasciamo fare a Dio.»