This article offers a critique of the manner in which doctoral supervision is conceptualised in a higher education system dominated by the market order. The authors consider the process of research supervision as an experience held in common, as a way of discovering the world together rather than as the fulfilment of discrete roles within a clearly defined timeframe. They propose an alternative ontology of research supervision, as a process of ‘unselfing’ informed by the enactment of agape (love) rather than as something that is characterised by conformity to a regulatory framework and informed by the dictates of institutionalised systems of monitoring and surveillance. This approach implies rejection of the relentless focus on choice and action that is characteristic of institutionalised higher education. The authors claim greater scope for consideration of the influence of the more elusive aspects of being human in the process of research supervision. This reappraisal of research supervision calls into question the pre‐eminence of the Newtonian order of time as something that flows uniformly, independently of things and their relationships and calls for renewed emphasis on time as lived experience. The authors draw on a musical analogy, namely the differences between classical music and jazz, in order to explore these themes in relation to research supervision.

No abstract

Why is music so important to us? There have been numerous attempts to answer this question, from a variety of perspectives. And yet, somehow this phenomenon that pervades so many aspects of our lives transcends attempts to capture precisely why it moves us. Contemporary philosophers and musicologists have at their disposal different and conflicting philosophies when it comes to exploring issues concerning music. In this chapter I will move beyond divergent philosophies of music, like essentialism and contextualism, and explore counterfactual perspectives on the musical experience as a distinctive form of meaning-making. Although metaphorical qualities of music have received considerable attention from philosophers, the significance of the counterfactual for the musical experience has largely been overlooked. However, by virtue of the fact that they are paradoxical configurations, metaphors provide the key to understanding counterfactual meaning-making. Based on philosophical texts and insights into how meaning is created counterfactually in our daily consciousness, I argue that, on the one hand, musical experience is counterfactually conditioned and, on the other hand, that music – through the counterfactual – contributes to meaning-making in our lives. The chapter contributes to the philosophy of music by advancing an alternative understanding of musical meaning-making through the counterfactual. By shedding new light on concepts like the irreducible and ineffable qualities of music, this understanding may also open new avenues to explore how music can be such a potent medium for understanding reality, for self-knowledge, liberation, pleasure, discipline and the exercise of power.