“As the progress of the Natural Sciences … involves the exposure of every mystery of Being as mere imaginary secrets after all, the sole concern must henceforth be the act of knowing; but intuitive knowledge appears to be entirely excluded, since it might lead to metaphysical vagaries … .
[P. 76] … I believe we are justified in concluding that the purely comprehending Subject, enthroned on the cathedra, is left with sole right to existence. A worthy close to the world-tragedy! (…) … to Art – which the Goliath of Knowledge more and more regards as a mere rudiment from the earliest stage of human reason, not unlike the os coccyx we still retain from the animal tail – he only pays attention when it offers archaeologic prospects of his launching some Historical thesis … .” [924W-{3-7/78} Public and Popularity: PW Vol. VI, p. 74-76]
But, in an apotheosis of irony, Wagner himself claimed that he gave Nietzsche the very means he would use to destroy him:
“… R. comes to Nietzsche, of whom he says: ‘That bad person has taken everything from me, even the weapons with which he now attacks me.’ “ [934W-{8/2/78} CD Vol. II, p. 128]
And the weapon Wagner gave Nietzsche was Feuerbach and his influence on Wagner’s Ring and all (or almost all, if we exclude The Flying Dutchman, which may or may not have been influenced by Feuerbach’s writings) of his other important artworks. It was Wagner’s Feuerbachian roots in atheism and materialism which Nietzsche claimed Wagner had betrayed in favor of Schopenhauerian mysticism, romantic nihilism and pessimism, and Christian sentimentality (Nietzsche’s rather shallow reading of Wagner’s last artwork, Parsifal). In view of the extraordinary similarity between Hagen’s relationship with Siegfried and Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner, it is amazing that in this case life followed art, because Wagner had already written the libretto of the Ring when Nietzsche was just a few years old and had not yet met, nor probably even heard of Wagner. Having no wish to repeat myself here (since I’ve dealt with this topic exhaustively elsewhere within this study), it’s worth remembering that Wagner conflated what he described in extract 924W above, as the historical school of philosophy (Nietzsche’s school), with Judaism:
“Historical criticism … casts in its lot with Judaism … .” [926W-{3-7/78} Public and Popularity: PW Vol. VI, p. 77-78]
“… I consider the Jewish race the born enemy of pure humanity and all that is noble in man: there is no doubt that we Germans [i.e., all those, according to Wagner, who do things for their own sake, for the beauty of them, rather than from ulterior motives like practical, vulgar need, profit, property, self-aggrandizement, power, fear, or to satisfy other consciously egoistic impulses] will be destroyed by them, and I may well be the last remaining German who, as an artist, has known how to hold his ground in the face of a Judaism which is now all-powerful.” [1107W-{11/22/81} Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria: SLRW, p. 918]
Wagner’s obsession with the Jews, and with Nietzsche’s evident apostasy, was founded on his projection of his fear that the scientific world-view - which seemed destined to absolute victory over religious faith and all those values which have historically been associated with it - might be right, on to the Jews, and that if this were the case there would be no further reason for a man of
