Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner
Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner

Author: T. K. Seung

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2006-03-27

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0739155679

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The author reads Goethe's Faust as the first epic written under Spinoza's influence. He shows how its thematic development is governed by Spinoza's pantheistic naturalism. He further contends that Wagner and Nietzsche have tried to surpass their mentor Goethe's work by writing their own Spinozan epics of love and power in The Ring of the Nibelung and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These Spinozan epics are designed to succeed the Christian epics in the Western literary tradition. Whereas the Christian epics dared to groom human beings for their destiny in the supernatural world, the Spinozan epics try to reinstate humanity as the children of Mother Nature and overcome their alienation from the natural world, which had been dictated by the long reign of Christianity. However, it has been well noted that none of these new epics seems to hang together thematically as a coherent work. By his Spinozan reading, the author not only demonstrates the thematic unity of each of them singly, but further illustrates their thematic relation with each other.

Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner
Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner

Author: T. K. Seung

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9780739111284

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The author reads Goethe's Faust as the first epic written under Spinoza's influence. He shows how its thematic development is governed by Spinoza's pantheistic naturalism. He further contends that Wagner and Nietzsche have tried to surpass their mentor Goethe's work by writing their own Spinozan epics of love and power in The Ring of the Nibelung and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These Spinozan epics are designed to succeed the Christian epics in the Western literary tradition. Whereas the Christian epics dared to groom human beings for their destiny in the supernatural world, the Spinozan epics try to reinstate humanity as the children of Mother Nature and overcome their alienation from the natural world, which had been dictated by the long reign of Christianity. However, it has been well noted that none of these new epics seems to hang together thematically as a coherent work. By his Spinozan reading, the author not only demonstrates the thematic unity of each of them singly, but further illustrates their thematic relation with each other.

Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe
Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe

Author: Martine Prange

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 3110315238

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) supported the unification of Europe and reflected on this like few other philosophers before or after him. Many of his works are concerned with the present state and future of European culture and humanity. Resisting the “nationalist nonsense” and “politics of dissolution” of his day, he advocated the birth of “good Europeans,” i.e. “supra-national” individuals and the “amalgamation of nations.” Nietzsche, Wagner, Europe analyzes the development of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal of European culture based on his musical aesthetics. It does so against the background of contemporary searches for a wider, cultural meaning beyond Europe’s economic-political union. The book claims that Nietzsche always propagated the “aestheticization” of Europe, but that his view on how to achieve this changed as a result of his dramatically altering philosophy of music. The main focus is on Nietzsche’s passion for and later aversion to Wagner’s music, and, in direct connection with this, his surprising embrace of Italian operas as new forms of “Dionysian” music and of Goethe as a model of “Good Europeanism.”