The case of Nietzsche: Schopenhauer, Wagner, and the ‘music-making’ physician of culture

Abstract

The primary object of this dissertation is to demonstrate the nature and extent of Wagner’s intellectual influence on Nietzsche and to unravel the logic behind Nietzsche’s enigmatic case of Wagner. An investigation of this nature appears now more than ever to be necessary, and for two especial reasons: 1) in the more general sense, and as far as scholars on Nietzsche are concerned, the nature of Wagner’s influence must finally find its rightful place in the literature and can no longer be dismissed or ignored; and 2) in the more immediate sense, we must finally be able to address what Nietzsche’s case of Wagner actually is, and to that extent, we can only attempt this undertaking by first analyzing the nature of Wagner’s influence on Nietzsche.

The object of our investigation will take a two-fold aim: first, to demonstrate the nature of that influence (Chapters 1 and 2), and second, to demonstrate how that influence became the basis of Nietzsche’s case of Wagner (Chapters 3 and 4).

We will demonstrate that Nietzsche’s enigmatic symbol of the ‘music-making Socrates,’ which until now has never sufficiently been analyzed in the secondary literature on Nietzsche, is at the very basis of Nietzsche’s case against Wagner. In particular, we will establish that this symbol, which grew out of Nietzsche’s advocacy for Wagner and the promise that Wagner himself represented for the rebirth of a new European culture, increasingly came to symbolize the advocacy Nietzsche wished for himself as the promise for the rebirth of a new tragic culture contra Wagner. It is this symbol in particular which holds the key to why Nietzsche’s case of Wagner becomes a matter for philosophy.

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ORCID for Lee Walters: orcid.org/0000-0003-3899-3522

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