As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Katherine McGinity looks at Michael Mack’s “Richard Wagner and the Trajectory of Transcendental Philosophy,” from Telos 123 (Spring 2002).
Michael Mack’s “Richard Wagner and the Trajectory of Transcendental Philosophy” explores the differing brands of anti-Semitism in Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer, and explains how their scrutiny of Jews as a hindrance to society was radicalized by Richard Wagner. Mack details how each philosopher’s particular form of anti-Semitism fed into Wagner’s social-political writings as well as his “total works of art.” By investigating the concepts put forth by Wagner’s philosophical predecessors, one can more fully understand how a radicalized version of Kantian moral philosophy infiltrated German national culture through the composer’s art. Mack specifically addresses how these ideas manifested in Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
