Hearing and Listening

Abstract

Many scholars have come to term our culture to be a visual-perceptual one. But in fact, the entire history of metaphysics is based on the primacy of sound (phonè), which, according to the ancient Greek, is the expression in humans of something that nature has imprinted on their soul/mind (Gr. psykhé, Lat. anima). The written letter as a signifier of the sound is specific to Western writing systems, and sound standing for the idea, has been the predominant chain of references from Socrates to Freud and Lacan.