longer and the briefer critiques are posted in the discussion forum archive at www.wagnerheim.com), which contains some of the arguments you’ve just read. What follows is his emailed response, in which he acknowledges to some extent the justice of my critique that the Ring interpretation Richard Schacht and he proffered doesn’t do adequate justice to Siegfried:
Private Email from Dr. Philip Kitcher (John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia Univ.) to Paul Heise, dated 7/16/2016:
"Please note: The following remarks express the views of Philip Kitcher; they do not necessarily accord with those of Richard Schacht.
I have some sympathy with Paul Heise’s complaints about the treatment of Siegfried in Finding an Ending (FE). To suppose that Siegfried is a shallow figure, not suited for the rich musical and dramatic world Wagner had created is hardly an ideal interpretation. Yet that judgment is not simply a product of our interpretation of the Ring. It accords with the experiences of thousands of Ring-goers, as well as the directors and dramaturges who wrestle with the problem of how to make Siegfried alive and sympathetic to a contemporary audience. Siegfried simply strikes almost everyone as a brainless cad (to borrow a quaint but lovely term from Wendy Doniger).
Heise strives to solve the problem by offering an allegorical reading. His “solution” quickly descends into obscurity. I am simply baffled by claims that Siegfried is Wotan reborn without knowledge of his identity or that Brünnhilde is his unconscious mind – and I have no clue as to how any rigorous interpreter would find evidence for these assertions. To my mind, Heise reacts to the problem by making things up ad hoc, in much the way Freud’s fiercest critics suppose that he “interpreted” the dreams and remarks of his patients. Better, to my mind, a clear – if suboptimal – response to the problem of Siegfried than the dark pseudo-profundities to which Heise is driven.
In e-mail correspondence, Heise has suggested that all would become clear if I read his book. Perhaps. But I doubt it. In the time I’ve been able to devote to his work on Wagner, the murk only gets denser the more I read. I’m not encouraged to plod on in hopes of enlightenment. Possibly other readers have had better luck.
But the problem of Siegfried is a serious one. It has bothered me since we finished FE, and I’ve tried to work my way to a better dramatic interpretation of the character. Interested readers can find a short account of my solution-in-progress in an essay I wrote for the Opera Book of Opera North’s rightly acclaimed production of the Ring. It’s under the title ‘Making Sense of Siegfried.’ Anyone who would like to read it, and who doesn’t have access to the Opera Book, can obtain a word doc copy, by writing to me at.”
My response to Dr. Kitcher’s defense of his position and brief critique of my online Ring study is the following. In my critical overview of Finding an Ending in the previous pages of this Epilogue I’ve rebutted Kitcher’s and Schacht’s arguments which promoted their demotion of Siegfried, arguing instead that he’s fully worthy of his status as the greatest of heroes which his lover and
