Jim Williams
The Philosophy of Richard Wagner
There is a clear and consistent philosophy behind the music dramas of Richard Wagner.There is a clear and consistent philosophy behind the music dramas of Richard Wagner. He worked out many of the details in the late 1840’s and early 1850’s and used them as the basis for the Ring, Tristan, Meistersinger and Parsifal. The philosophy is a clever weaving together of ideas primarily from David Friedrich Strauss’ The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835) and Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1844).Jim Williams6 min read