In the spirit of music: for a thesis about the tragic synthesis in Schopenhauer and Wagner

Abstract

Around the discussion of musical art in the thought of Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche, a question arises: what is the relationship between music and the other arts? In The World as Will and Representation the question is posed in a germinal form and in Wagner's Beethoven is radicalized: from the concept of sympathy the musical experience is considered from a direction opposite of that experienced in aesthetic contemplation of beautiful, and therefore explicable only from the sublime. Interestingly, from the sublime is that Schopenhauer explains the essence of tragedy, that could perhaps be thought, in an attempt to present an alternative theory for the interaction between the arts, like art that synthesizes the radicalism of opposite natures of the visual arts and music, as their intersection. Thus, the preliminary publication of The Birth of Tragedy, we have here an interesting interpretive key to be investigated.