I have been promising readers a review of Joachim Köhler’s Richard Wagner: The Last of the Titans (TLT)—or, in German Der letzte der Titanen (LDT)—for a while. I doubt that I have the time and inclination to review the whole book at once. Nor would it be practical to write such an in depth review here. However, one subject that does interest me is the philosophy of F.W.J Schelling, including his relationship to other thinkers of his time such as Wagner. As it happens, an examination of this relationship between Schelling and Wagner forms the crux and core of Köhler’s book—the very central supportive pillar of his views on the philosophical Wagner.
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| Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) |
The philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (27 January 1775 — 20 August 1854) is a recent interest for me, a thinker I am only really coming to grips with now after decades of neglect—during which time there has been something of a Renaissance in our understanding of this thinker, with even an avowed communist like Slavoj Žižek taking a fresh look at his thought. The full picture of Schelling's influence on other thinkers such as Hegel, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Jaspers and Jung is only just now beginning to emerge. In fact, the developing view of Schelling in the rapidly growing literature on him is one of a severely neglected and misunderstood thinker, a neglect that is in part due to the fact that he virtually stopped publishing after the devastating death in 1809 of his first wife, Caroline—an extraordinarily brilliant mind in her own right. However, despite being five years his junior, Schelling not only matured as a major philosopher before Hegel (1770–1831), but outlived him by twenty three years, during which Schelling continued to develop his system of thought and actively lecture. Schelling even lived to witness the German Revolution of 1848-49 that inspired Wagner’s Ring. Though, as for Schelling’s response to the 1848-49 Revolution, in his diary in December of 1848, he sided against Wagner and Bakunin’s revolutionary side, and expressed hoped for:
A real despotism, not merely a theoretical one like that of Frederick William (III), which merely conceals a truly free system of government; – a real despotism like that of the Russians alone might seem to bring an end to the current movement into sight.
Ein wirklicher Despotismus, nicht ein bloß theoretischer wie der eines Friedrich Wilhelm (III), welcher ein wahrhaft freies Regierungssystem bloß verschleiert; – ein echter Despotismus wie der russische scheint allein ein Ende der jetzigen Bewegung in Aussicht zu stellen.
F.W.J. Schelling: Das Tagebuch 1848. P 165 §126. My translation.
Part of the reason why I am tackling Köhler’s book only now is because I first needed to better come to grips with Schelling, before critically appraising the central claim of Köhler’s book that Schelling is the dominant philosophical influence on Wagner.
Köhler makes a number of strikingly unorthodox assertions about Wagner:
The darkly flooding primordial wellspring, swimming with water maidens was also to be the starting point for Wagner’s creation of the world of The Ring of the Nibelung. But this primal fount sprang not from his own thinking, but from the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, in whose writings it had first appeared almost half a century earlier in answer to the question as to the primal beginning of all Being. Here Schelling uses the same images as those found in Opera and Drama to conjure up the coming age of art.
For Schelling, who was a friend from Hegel’s youth, all Being consisted of the clash between light and darkness, and this opposition could be resolved only by God. This God was not to be found in the eternal stasis of the Absolute but was an active will for creative development. ‘Will is primordial Being’, Schelling recognised long before Schopenhauer...
Köhler TLT: my translation based partially on translation by Spencer, hardcover edition, p294 (Yale University Press, 2004). My bold emphasis.
An diesem dunkel strömenden, von Wellemädchen umschwommenen Urquell sollte Wagner seinen eigene Weltenschlöpfung von »Ring des Nibelungen« beginnen lassen. Entsprungen war dieser Urquell allerdings nicht seinem eigenen Denken, sondern der Philosophie Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schellings. Sie hatte, fast ein halbes Jahrhundert vor Wagner, die Frage nach dem Uranfang alles Seins mit denselben Bildern beantwortet, die in »Oper und Drama« das kommende Zeitalter der Kunst beschworen.
Für Schelling, den Jugendfreund Hegels, bestand alles Sein aus dem Gegensatz von Licht und Dunkel, der nur in Gott aufgehoben war. Dieser Gott verharrte nicht im ewigen Stillstand des Absoluten, sondern war aktiver Wille, der sich nach schöpferischer Tätigkeit sehnt. »Wollen ist Ursein«, erkannte Schelling lange vor Schopenhauer...
Köhler LDT: hardcover edition, 2001, S. 381 (Claassen Verlag, 2001). My bold emphasis.
As usual with Köhler, these statements turn out to be largely nonsense, or at best extremely tenuous and problematic. Unfortunately, his whole book teems with the most absurd statements, but the claim that Wagnerian thought merely represents an unoriginal rehash of Schelling represents the pinnacle of them all. This is not to deny a certain hidden kernel of truth in some of what he is saying, but the claims are so grotesquely exaggerated and perversely twisted as to place them entirely beyond academic credibility.
In claiming that Wagner is “nothing but” recycled Schelling, Köhler is asserting that Wagner was lying when he claimed to having been profoundly influenced first by Feuerbach, and then, later, by Schopenhauer. To understand how Köhler reaches this conclusion it is first necessary to thoroughly appreciate the standard modus operandi of his hermeneutic methodology, in which things are interpreted to mean “the exact opposite” of what it actually says:
In order to understand the Bayreuth cult one must first decipher its language. To take it literally is to play into the hands of tricksters. Not infrequently it says the opposite of what it means . . .
Köhler: Wagner’s Hitler, p115. My emphasis.
Here is another example in TLT where Köhler follows this procedure:
Wagner’s revealingly convoluted train of thought can scarcely conceal the fact that Schopenhauer intended more or less the exact opposite of the ideas trumpeted by [Wagner]...In short, music did not have to represent something, but revealed the very thing that lay at the basis of everything else.
TLT: p421. My emphasis.In this case, Köhler claims to have exposed a catastrophic contradiction between Wagner’s later philosophy of music and the Schopenhauerian thought that inspired it. This claim is based on the allegation that Wagner supposedly misinterpreted Schopenhauer to mean the "exact opposite" of what he actually said. It is complete nonsense, and for a genuinely worthy study of the subject of how Wagner's views on absolute music (a term he himself coined) changed dramatically from his Feuerbachian and Schopenhauerian periods, the reader is referred to the immensely authoritative Carl Dahlhaus in his book The Idea of Absolute Music as well as Richard Wagner's Music Dramas. In the later Wagner, the non-musical dramatic events become “acts of music made visible” (Ersichtlich gewordene Taten der Musik, Volume IX Gesammelte Schriften, p306), where the music represents the true metaphysical essence of the dramatic events, indeed, of the world itself—a thoroughly Schopenhauerian idea, as the great Dahlhaus rightly points out.
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| In his Schopenhauerian period Wagner came to see drama as "acts of music made visible" "Ersichtlich gewordene Taten der Musik" |
Once again, spouting all sorts of polemical nonsense about Schopenhauer, Köhler asserts that:
Schopenhauer’s ‘metaphysics’ was in fact the very opposite of that: like desire, the elevated notions that were associated with love serving solely to tempt individuals into propagating the species.
Köhler TLT, p 422. My emphasis.
It is certainly true that according to Schopenhauer, Love—even in its expression as friendship—was a mixture of selfishness and compassionate love:
Selfishness is ερωσ [eros], sympathy or compassion is αγαπη [agapi]. Combinations of the two occur frequently; even genuine friendship is always a mixture of selfishness and sympathy.
The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, §67, p 374 (Dover Ed, trans Payne)
Wagner is perfectly aware of the question of the imperfectness of both romantic love and friendship, and of the tension that Schopenhauer presents between eros and agapi, but Wagner grasps that rising through different levels of purity, Love becomes increasingly spiritualised, compassionate, and self-denying. In Tristan we sense the impossibility of realising Pure Love in either romantic love or friendship—at least other than through death as the only solution to the tension between eros and agapi, where not only Isolde, but Tristan's truest friend, Kurwenal, equally dies clasping Tristan’s hand in his dying moments. Schopenhauer wrote:
... Love, whose origin and nature we know to be seeing through the principium individuationis, leads to salvation, that is, to the entire surrender of the will-to-live, i.e., of all willing, and also how another path, less smooth yet more frequented, brings man to the same goal, a paradoxical sentence must first be here stated and explained. This is not because it is paradoxical, but because it is true, and is necessary for the completeness of the thought I have to express. It is this: “All Love (αγαπη, caritas) is compassion or sympathy.”
The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, §66, p 373 (Dover Ed, trans Payne)
The biggest problem Köhler has in reducing Wagner down to recycled Schelling is that Wagner never once mentions Schelling as a positive influence, whereas there are endless admiring references in his published works, first to Feuerbach, and then later to Schopenhauer. Predictably, it turns out that Köhler reaches his conclusions by following his standard hermeneutic operating procedure.
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| Wagner's Opera and Music (1851): Ludwig Feuerbach—in dankbarer Verehrung gewidmet Ludwig Feuerbach—dedicated in grateful reverence |
While the late Wagner constantly and untiringly refers to Schopenhauer with ardently glowing admiration, by way of contrast, Wagner dismissively refers to Schelling in the Cosima diaries as a contemptuous “philosophaster” (4th October, 1881)*. On another occasion on 18th October 1880, there is a suggestion that Wagner regarded Schelling with such contempt that he says he would prefer to read “the worst treatise of a protestant theologian” (die ärgste Traktat eine protestantischen Theologen) than such “nonsense” (Unsinn). Hardly a resounding endorsement of Schelling. On 16th December 1880 Cosima reports that Wagner reacted “with growing outrage” (mit zunehmender Empörung) to Schelling’s Offenbarung—a reference to one of the several versions on the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation (Philosophie der Mythologie und Offenbarung). You would have thought that such a work, with its extensive discussion of mythology, would have appealed to Wagner, but instead the "exact opposite"—to borrow Köhler's favourite turn of phrase—was the case. In place of glowing admiration, Wagner accuses Schelling on the 16th December 1880 of reducing German thinking to the level of “imbeciles” (Imbécillen) and to the “pernicious” (tückisch). On 1st December 1880, Wagner says that he thought that Schelling had "lapsed into error" (in Irrtümer verfallen). On 26th November 1880 Wagner even says that Schopenhauer had not gone far enough in exposing the likes of Schellingian “charlatans” (Scharlatane). What conclusion does Köhler draw from this? Simply, that Schelling was the single greatest influence of them all on Wagner, and that Schelling’s pervasive influence permeates Wagner’s entire oeuvre through and through! Unfortunately, it is just another one of Köhler’s bizarre fantasies, based on his standard hermeneutic procedure of interpreting things to mean the “exact opposite” of what they actually say—but, naturally, only where it suits Köhler.
It should also be mentioned that Schelling’s late thoughts on the philosophy of mythology and revelation derive from lecture notes, since he never formally published his definitive thoughts on the subject. The lecture series held in Berlin in 1841/42 initially attracted a celebrity intellectual circus including Bakunin, Engels, Kierkegaard, Ruge, and Burckhardt. Engels attended only to safeguard the memory of Hegel (who had died ten years before in 1831) against being tarnished by Schelling—Hegel’s youthful friend and roommate turned bitter rival. Most of the celebrities initially present at Schelling’s Berlin lectures eventually gave up attendance because they regarded Schelling to be so politically reactionary and dated in his ideas as to be unworthy of their time. Kierkegaard complained of Schelling talking complete nonsense. Feuerbach dismissed Schelling's thought as a “theosophical farce” (theosophische Posse). Engels reacted to the lectures with his 1842 polemic entitled Schelling—The Philosopher in Christo or the Transformation of Worldly Wisdom into Divine Wisdom (der Philosoph in Christo, oder die Verklärung der Weltweisheit zur Gottesweisheit). Wagner merely followed in the path of Engels and other Young Hegelians with his equally dismissive reception of the late Schelling.
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| Schelling, the Philosopher in Christo, or the Transformation of Worldly Wisdom into Divine Wisdom. For Faithful Christians to whom the philosophical use of language is unknown. Berlin, 1842. Published by von A. Enssenhardt. |
Wagner’s socialist anarchist friend, Bakunin, possibly discussed Schelling with him, and Wagner’s attitude towards Schelling may reflect his old friend’s influence. At the time Bakunin attended those 1841/42 Berlin lectures, Wagner may have already started to come under the spell of Feuerbach. Feuerbach’s views on religion and mythology were published around the exact same time in The Essence of Christianity (1841). His ideas about mythology and religion, which were received with acclaim by Marx and Engels, were the principal rival to those of Schelling. Wagner emphatically sides with Feuerbach, against Schelling, who is shunned. It is therefore the Young Hegelianism of Feuerbach whose views pervade the Ring with its apocalyptic end to the gods, and not those of Schelling. Wagner’s writings make it absolutely explicit that he belongs to the Young Hegelian lineage of thought along with Feuerbach—one that dismissed Schelling as a right-wing political reactionary. It seems so natural that Feuerbach's view on mythology and religion be rightfully recognised as the dominant influence on Wagner, that Köhler's abject failure to present an even remotely convincing case for glibly dismissing the elephant in the room of Feuerbach's influence seems, by comparison, utterly outrageous—before inexplicably replacing it with the “exact opposite” position where Schelling’s views on mythology and religion form the dominant influence on Wagner. By the time Wagner did eventually get around to reading late Schelling in the 1880s, through one of the several published lecture notes (the edition is unclear) on mythology and religion, Wagner had not only long completed the Ring, but he merely contemptuously dismissed Schelling as a “charlatanical imbécile”.
Feuerbach, too, is intimately related to all these other German thinkers in that he was a former pupil of Hegel, who, along with Ruge, Engels and Marx, belongs amongst the thinkers referred to as the Young Hegelians. It is little surprising that if you wanted to, you can draw out all sorts of relations and parallels between all of these roughly contemporaneous German thinkers and their predecessors. However, to merely dismiss the Young Hegelians as being “nothing but” a literal repetition of the same old Hegelian tune is a maliciously reductive oversimplification:
Even if the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach, wanted to turn their [Hegelian] model ‘upside down’, the ideas were still Hegel’s...
Köhler, p261 TLTThere are actually such significant differences between Hegel and the Young Hegelians that it makes any claim to the effect that Feuerbach, Marx and Hegel’s ideas are just the same thing highly dubious. Although outright Marxist interpretations of Hegel remain popular in some circles, most Hegel scholars these days, such as Frederick Beiser and Terry Pinkard, simply do not accept them, and nor do I—although I am not entirely unsympathetic either. Once you dissociate Hegel from dogmatic Marxist interpretations of his philosophy, the difference between the former Jena friends and roommates, Hegel and Schelling, becomes much less marked.
Again, this is just another instance of Köhler spouting further unjustifiable claims, this time to there being a black-and-white divide between the thought of a supposedly proto-Marxist atheist Hegel vs. a reactionary theistic Schelling. Köhler creates extremely artificial divisions, solely through his willingness to twist things to mean the "exact opposite" of what they actually say for the sake of his divisive polemic, here driven by a dubious brand of reactionary right-wing “Schellingianism”—a polemic directed against Hegel and the Young Hegelians. Köhler has once again clearly declared his right-wing political colours in taking his polemical reactionary stance against the Hegelian Left, and in trying to misuse the late religious Schelling (who had turned his back on the Spinozism he once shared with Hegel) as a polemical instrument against the Young Hegelians—including Wagner.
Yet for all of the fanaticism of his polemics against Wagner, it seems exceedingly curious—even faintly bizarre—that Köhler wishes to claim Wagner for his own reactionary theistic side, rather than place him with Feuerbach on the side of the Young Hegelians. However, the motive behind that too becomes clear when Köhler rejects Schopenhauer, Hegel and the Young Hegelians as all being unacceptably atheistic (even if in a Spinozist manner), a position he contrasts with that of his pious, God fearing, Schelling. Unfortunately for Köhler, even the Wagner who completed Parsifal in 1882 (which contains not a single reference to God) still says that God is an “anthropomorphic metaphor” in a clear-cut simultaneous reference both to Feuerbach (God as anthropomorphism) and Schopenhauer (religion as metaphor), long after Schopenhauer had replaced Feuerbach in Wagner's affections:
“Knowest thou thy creator—world?” Thus cries the poet, who, out of the necessities of conceptual verbal-language had to express something inexpressible with an anthropomorphic metaphor; merely in a misleading way.
„Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?”—so ruft der Dichter, der aus Bedarf der begrifflichen Wort-Sprache mit Hilfe einer anthropomorphistischen Metapher etwas Unausdrückbares nur mißverständlich bezeichnen muß.
Wagner: Religion und Kunst (1880). Gesammelte Schriften X, p 250
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| In Art and Religion, Wagner quotes Schiller's Ode to Joy only to say that this God is an anthropomorphic metaphor "anthropomorphistischen Metapher" |
This passage from Wagner’s late writings beautifully demonstrates the Aufhebung, or sublation, that occurred in Wagner between the seeming antithetical Feuerbachian and Schopenhauerian philosophies. The end result was that, for Wagner, these two seeming opposites became complementary:
However, as he himself alone is that which strives against himself, thus his rage expresses itself as a nothing other than his self-negation. The only thing that can finally bring him to a self-realisation that that which can neutralise suffering is compassion, which as the sublation [Aufhebung] of the Will, expresses the negation of a negation— something we understand according to the rules of logic as an affirmation.
Da er aber doch selbst wiederum allein nur dieses sich Entgegenstrebende ist, so drückt sein Wüten nichts Anderes als sein Selbst-Verneinung aus, und hierüber zur Selbstbesinnung zu gelangen darf endlich nur das dem Leiden entkeimende Mitleiden ermöglichen, welches dann als Aufhebung des Willens die Negation einer Negation ausdrückt, die wir nach Regeln der Logik als Affirmation verstehen.
Wagner: Religion und Kunst (1880). Gesammelte Schriften X, p245
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| Aufhebung des Willens The Sublation of the Will |
Of course, there could scarcely be a word more profoundly Hegelian than Aufhebung—one that reflects the influence of Hegel pupil, Feuerbach. The astonishing fact that Wagner uses the word Aufhebung in nothing less than the context of a discussion of Schopenhauer goes to demonstrate how an extraordinary marriage of the antitheses of Feuerbach and Schopenhauer has occurred in Wagner. Wagner’s interpretation is therefore a Young Hegelian interpretation of Schopenhauer.
As for the idea that Schopenhauer’s ideas are merely derivative of Schelling’s, this is hardly an original suggestion. The expression »Wollen ist Ursein« (Willing is primordial Being) comes from the Paulus notes taken from the 1841/42 Schelling lectures on the philosophy of revelation. Schopenhauer was probably more influenced by the earlier Schelling than the hostile comments Schopenhauer made about him suggest, but probably not by the late Schelling. Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation itself dates from 1844. The ideas Schopenhauer developed there about the Will were more likely "in the air" rather than reflecting direct influence or plagiarism. The idea that human beings are driven more by an irrational Will also predates both Schelling and Schopenhauer with the Sturm und Drang philosopher Johann Georg Hamann (see Frederick Beiser: The Fate of Reason). Ideas about the primacy of the faculty of desire, and of the eternally striving Will also play key roles in Fichte's philosophy. However, neither in Fichte, and nor especially in late Schelling, does the idea of the Will carry any of the intensely irrationalist connotations found in Schopenhauer's central idea of a raging Blind Will. Neither Fichte nor Schelling refer to the Will as being so explosively dark and blind, and nor is the concept of a driving Will anywhere near so central to their thought. Even Hegel, it must be mentioned, speaks remarkably often of drives (Triebe) and desire (Begierde) in his writing. This shows that even where terminology may have similarities, there are equally profound differences in emphasis within the respective structures of their philosophical systems. It is simply inadmissible merely to collapse all the differences down and state that because they all refer to the Will or to Triebe, they therefore must all be plagiarising Schelling by merely repeating what he already said.
The point here is that if you are going to start to point out that any one of these German thinkers uses terms similar to, or derivative of, other contemporaries and predecessors, then you can do it with all of them—Schelling included. While the degree of influence Schelling had on other thinkers has certainly been underestimated, it is hardly helpful to swing to the opposite extreme with an ad hoc reduction of everyone, including Wagner or Schopenhauer, to “nothing but” a plagiarism or recycling of Schelling. That just completely whitewashes the situation, and is clearly driven by a facile hero worshipping overvaluation of Schelling as the sole Original Genius, of whose thought everyone else’s is but a pallid plagiaristic simulacrum. If you are going to take that line, you can similarly claim that Schelling is “nothing but” a derivative potpourri of Böhme, Hamann, Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schlegel, Goethe, and Jacobi. Likewise, the absurd claim that Hegel's idea of the Absolute is merely one of “stasis” (sic!) is merely another example of the sort of polemical exaggeration Köhler is prone to lapsing into, and comes from the fact that Schelling and Hegel fell out with one another, with each taking snipes at the another throughout their mature careers. Such snipes are generally intended to misrepresent their former friend turned bitter rival. Hegel and Schelling competed to outdo each other in more forthrightly emphasising emergentist historical developmentalism through an ever more dynamic conception of Nature.
Lastly, although the Young Hegelian Left in those days, such as Engels, Bakunin and Wagner, were unanimous in their dismissal of Schelling, I personally do think that there are interesting things in Schelling's late thoughts on mythology and religion that have been misunderstood. I think it is time to re-examine Schelling, but not from the reactionary right-wing perspectives of "Imbécillen" and “Scharlatane” like Köhler, and his “Unsinn”—as an “outraged” Wagner would have called it. To that end, I have only just acquired several further volumes on late Schelling to further my understanding on this subject. That, however, is beyond the scope of this blog, and it is something I am still coming to grips with. As for Köhler, I have always thought he is someone with a philosophy background dabbling in a musicology field he is ill qualified for (I have never once seen analysis of musical structure, harmony, development, nor seen any demonstration of familiarity with scores), but his own unique brand of “philosophastry” is equally bogus, and for which his books deserve to be dumped in the intellectual rubbish bin where they belong.
All of this seems sadly to be part of the ongoing love-hate relationship that the political right has with Wagner. It simply has to be admitted that Köhler has a pathological obsession with Wagner. Right-wingers know deep down that Wagner belongs firmly with the political left, but in order to justify continuing their guilty pleasure in listening to his music at the opera house, they reassure themselves with bogus arguments about how Wagner is actually one of them i.e. a Nazi. In this way, conservatives seek to neutralise Wagner’s threat to burn down the opera house as a hallowed bastion of right-wing conservatism. In Wagner's Hitler, Köhler even speculates with a sense of horrified reactionary moral indignation that Wagner should be condemned for having allegedly personally set fire to the Dresden Opera House while participating in the 1849 pro-democratic uprisings:
A delight in the all-consuming fire remained with Wagner throughout his life [no supporting bibliographic citations given]. ... Wagner himself arranged for the necessary pitch torches and hand grenades to be prepared in the spring of 1849. ... For Bakunin, said Wagner, this conflagration was to end with the destruction of the whole of civilisation, a destruction launched from the streets of Dresden by the ‘great Russian pyrotechnician’. ....[On] 7 May 1849, Wagner was compensated by witnessing the destruction of the old opera house, which gave him ‘a strange sense of satisfaction’. The suspicion was often vented that he was looking for an alternative use for the petrol and pitch torches originally intended for the palace. ... He would, of course, have had every reason to destroy a theatre that symbolised ... the ancien régime, whose time in Dresden was a long way from being over. Furthermore, nobody, apart from Röckel, knew the layout of the theatre as well as he did. ... It was a barbaric act...
Köhler: Wagner’s Hitler, p44–46 (Taylor Translation).
In other words, the whole of the Dresden pro-democracy uprising was, in Köhler’s ultra-reactionary view, a monstrous “barbaric act” (sic) akin to the barbarisms of the Nazis, for which Wagner the Young Hegelian should therefore be held singularly responsible—including World War II and the Holocaust. In this way, Köhler can bathe in the sounds of Wagner at the opera house while smugly scapegoating the political left for causing World War II and the Holocaust. Köhler even condescends to take the side of the reactionary monarchist side against Wagner by insinuating that his participation in the Dresden pro-democracy movement represented an appalling “contempt for the Monarch” (Köhler: Wagner’s Hitler, p.43). Next, in The Last of the Titans, Köhler follows with the logical sequel to his previous book by attempting to force ridiculous reactionary ultra-right-wing interpretations of Schelling onto Wagner in order for Köhler to lend himself the phoney air of lofty philosophical legitimacy. In reality, it is all little more than rampantly speculative “philosophastry”.
Note:
* Although Cosima spells it “Philosophaster” it is possible that Wagner meant “Philosopfaster” in a portmanteau word crossing “Philosopher” with “Pfaffe”, an old pejorative term meaning “priest”.
Related Posts:
So, who really was the “Last Titan” of the Austro-German tradition? For an essay that may surprise you try this.
A little essay on Wagner’s anarchist socialist friend, Michael Bakunin, that runs counter to the usual misinformed stereotypes about Wagner, and may prove highly grating to right-wing opera goers. For more on Wagner’s involvement in the Dresden pro-democracy uprisings see this essay on the Fatherland Union Paper.
For an in-depth review of Köhler’s previous book on Wagner see the post on Wagner’s Hitler. It is sadly more like Köhler’s Hitler, where Köhler has set himself up as Hitler’s official mouthpiece and Party spokesman.
Further reading on Schelling:
A brief introduction:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schelling/
The best in depth overview to the intellectual background leading to Schelling is still Beiser: German Idealism. The chapter on Schelling is very good indeed, but you have to do a lot of reading to get there. On the other hand, unless you'd read Beiser up till that point you wouldn't have much of a clue as to what Schelling was about anyway.
Schelling's earlier Nature Philosophy is covered well in this book, but this is still the neo-Spinozist Schelling, somewhat different to the late thinker who turned his back on Spinozism:
http://www.amazon.com/Schellings-Organic-Form-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B007QT0FFS/
A book on the late Schelling:
http://www.amazon.com/Potencies-God-Schellings-Philosophy-Mythology/dp/0791409740/
An English translation of one of the late lecture series on the philosophy of mythology and religion:
http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Critical-Introduction-Contemporary-Continental-ebook/dp/B003HC8I4S/
There are several versions of similar lecture series, from 1831/32 as well as from Berlin from 1841/42 and then a later version (published by Beck Verlag) upon which the above English translation is based. Which one of these Wagner read around 1880 is unknown.
The original Beck versions in German are available from the publisher:
http://www.chbeck.de/Schelling-Werke-5-Ergaenzungsband-Philosophie-Mythologie/productview.aspx?product=20759
http://www.chbeck.de/Schelling-Werke-6-Ergaenzungsband-Philosophie-Offenbarung/productview.aspx?product=20760
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