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British psychologists
Wagner is a German operatic composer; he’s Nietzsche’s former friend but current enemy. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner used to be a good artist but became seduced by Christianity in later life, which ruined his art. To Nietzsche, Wagner’s earlier operas (like Luther’s Wedding) were bold, creative, complex, and interesting. Nietzsche thinks Wagner’s later operas (like Parsifal) become shallow vehicles for moral posturing, which makes them both bad and culturally damaging.
Richard Wagner Quotes in On the Genealogy of Morals
The On the Genealogy of Morals quotes below are all either spoken by Richard Wagner or refer to Richard Wagner . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? Quotes
What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?
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At any rate, this should be the case with all mortals who are sound in mind and body, who are far from regarding their delicate balance between ‘animal’ and ‘angel’ as necessarily an objection to existence—the brightest and most insightful of them, such as Goethe and Hafiz, have even seen in this another of life's charms. Such ‘conflicts’ actually make life all the more enticing.
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He suddenly realized that more could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian […] notion of the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music set apart from and distinguished from all the other arts, music as the independent art-in-itself, not like the other arts, affording images of the phenomenal world, but rather speaking the language of the will itself, straight out of the ‘abyss,’ as its most personal, original and direct manifestation.
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Richard Wagner Character Timeline in On the Genealogy of Morals
The timeline below shows where the character Richard Wagner appears in On the Genealogy of Morals. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Third Essay: What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?
2. Nietzsche looks at the operatic composer Richard Wagner, who celebrates “chastity” in his later operas. Wagner depicts “chastity” and “sensuality” as opposites—meaning that...
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3. Nietzsche berates another of Wagner’s operatic characters in the opera Parsifal. This time, Nietzsche’s target is Parsifal, a simple country...
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...the artist to disappear so that the work can come alive in its own right. Wagner, however, turns his art into a reflection of his own beliefs—specifically, his turn to chastity...
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...just reflecting the views of society, their patrons, or a particular philosophy. Nietzsche thinks that Wagner was seduced by Schopenhauer’s philosophical ideas about music. Wagner used to think of music as...
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...to moral posturing. Germans are numbed because they feel superior and listen to too much Wagner. Nietzsche thinks that everywhere in Europe, all he smells is bad air.
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