 This framework allows Hegel to develop an original argument in support of the otherwise commonplace view that music moves us. The self is constituted in time, and musical sounds exist in time. It is this common medium that allows music to exert such a powerful effect on our emotional life (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II, 1.c). Poetry shares with music its temporal and aural dimension, but it separates medium from content, as the concepts conveyed by a poem are arbitrarily linked to the words that constitute it, whereas music’s content is inseparable from its sounding (Hegel 1835: part III, section III, chapter II, 1.a).