“Let us not … find fault with Western man for not drawing the practical consequences of his religious faith, for highhandedly ignoring the implications of his faith and in reality, in practice, abjuring it; for it is solely to this inconsistency, this practical unbelief, this instinctive atheism and egoism that we owe all progress, all the inventions which distinguish Christians from Mohammedans, and Occidentals in general from Orientals. Those who rely on God’s omnipotence, who believe that whatever happens and is, happens and is by the will of God, will never cast about for means to remedy the evils of the world, either those natural evils which can be remedied – for there is no cure for death – or the evils of human society.” [253F-LER: p. 167] [See also 254F]
As is well known, while Wagner was writing the libretto text of the Ring he remained, for the most part, a convinced Feuerbachian, but shortly after he began composing the music he underwent a nearly wholesale conversion to Schopenhauer’s mystical philosophy, a system of thought which – though based largely on science and an atheistic critique of the religious notions of Godhead, immortality, and free will - tried to smuggle back into this secular outlook an element of mystery inherently irreducible to reason and inaccessible to conceptual knowledge, which we might call aesthetic intuition. In the following Schopenhauer-colored passages Wagner offers rejoinders to each of Feuerbach’s points in the preceding extracts:
[P. 73] “So much for the utilitarian round of our Academic officialdom. Close by, however, there runs another, with claims to quite an ideal use, from whose correct accomplishment the academician promises the healing of all the world: here reign pure Science and its eternal Progress. Both are committed to the ‘Philosophic faculty,’ in which Philology and Natural Science are included. Indeed that ‘progress’ on which our governments expend so much, is furnished almost solely by the various sections of Natural Science; and here, if we mistake not, stands Chemistry at top. (…) On Philosophy proper, however, the accumulating discoveries of Physics, above all of the same Chemistry, react as veritable charms, from which every poor Philology may draw her ample share of profit [Wagner here alludes to his erstwhile friend Nietzsche, the philologist]. (…) From Physical Science, however, especially when they foregather on the field of Aesthetics, both philologists and philosophists obtain peculiar encouragement, nay obligation, to an as yet illimitable progress in the art of criticising all things human and inhuman. [* Translator’s Footnote: ‘Alluding to F. Nietzsche’s ‘Menschliches, Allzumenschliches’ – ‘Human, All-too-human’ – first published in May 1878; the two immediately succeeding sentences, and the last of this paragraph, are peculiarly applicable to the ‘case of’ Nietzsche.’] It seems, to wit, that from that science’s [P. 74] experiments they derive profound authority for an altogether special skepsis … which ensures them their appointed share in the general everlasting Progress.” [923W-{3-7/78} Public and Popularity: PW Vol. VI, p. 73-74]
“Luther’s main revolt was against the Roman Church’s shameless Absolution, which went so far as to accept deliberate prepayment for sins not yet committed: his anger came too late; the world soon managed to abolish Sin entirely, and believers now look for redemption from evil to Physics and Chemistry.” [1045W-{11/80} What Boots This Knowledge – First Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 256]
[P. 118] “But the theory of Constant Progress takes refuge in the ‘infinitely broader horizon’ of the modern world, as compared with the narrow field of vision of the old. (…) Our world … is irreligious. How should a Highest dwell in us, when we no longer are capable of honouring, of even
