168 music, philosophy, and modernity
formerly occupied by Feuerbach and other thinkers on the political
Left. Some of Feuerbach’s ideas are later adopted, despite his dif-
ferent political standpoint, by the later Nietzsche, because of Feuer-
bach’s concern to promote concentration on sensuous human exis-
tence over philosophical abstractions. Wagner’s change of philosoph-
ical orientation also leads to a shift in his views on the relationship
between music and language. It is, on the other hand, Wagner’smusic
in the 1850 s which helps to establish Schopenhauer’s reputation as a
philosopher, a reputation which until that time was anything but firmly
established. At the same time, Wagner’s enthusiasm for Schopenhauer
emerges not least because of his re-assessment of what his own music
was ‘saying’. Were one to see the changes in the views of Nietzsche
and Wagner solely in philosophical terms, they would both have to be
regarded as merely inconsistent thinkers. This judgement would, how-
ever, miss most of what is important about their self-contradictions. Fur-
thermore, if the significance of Wagner’s later work were wholly dictated
by its relationship to Schopenhauer, it would be subject to the objec-
tions we shall encounter when considering Schopenhauer later in the
chapter.
The main reason for the complexity of the story here is that the
developments with regard to music relate to the wider crisis concern-
ing the status of philosophy which follows the decline of Hegelianism
from the 1840 sonwards. Although this crisis may seem to be a local
issue within German intellectual life, the questions associated with that
decline have much broader implications. The decline has, for example,
to do with the success of the empirically based natural sciences, which
leads many people to argue that philosophical attempts at giving an
overall description of nature and our relationship to it get in the way of
verifiable science. Such assessments help to open up the space for ver-
sions of metaphysics 2 .Asthe sciences become more effective because
of their increasing specialisation and differentiation, the need for what
can ‘hold together a world in thought’ (Dieter Henrich) is transferred
to other forms of understanding and expression. At the same time, such
forms themselves come under attack because they cannot be assessed
in the terms applicable to the sciences. Such attacks can be justified,
when, for example, the decline of systematic metaphysics is answered
by an appeal to mythology as the means of making a world cohere:
nineteenth-century and subsequent nationalisms are a key example of
this. Wagner illustrates the underlying problem via his combination
of musical innovation with the occasional employment of nationalist