The art of hypnosis: Friedrich Nietzsche against the aesthetics of decadence by Richard Wagner

• Grant number: 11/10932-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marcio Benchimol Barros
• Grantee: Felipe Thiago dos Santos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

From the various allegations made by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) in O Caso Wagner (Der Fall Wagner, 1888) to the composer, writer and theorist Richard Wagner (1813-1883) we can penetrate inside the Nietzschean critique to the constituent elements of the Wagnerian dramas, taking as theoretical support for the effectuation of these complaints the concept of décadence. That's because in the core of the theoretical program of transvaluation engendered by Nietzsche during his intellectual production, the décadence appears as one of the conducting wire, which allows to the German philosopher not only denounce the morals of his time, or in other words, to delate a modernity stunted in their culture, philosophy and science, but also, to point how Wagner contributes to the process of wasting away of the art. In this context, this research aims to elucidate not only how Wagner is put by Nietzsche as a décadent representative of modernity artistically corrupt, but also to show the way in which the Wagnerian aesthetic, made for the rapture of the spectator, it takes by principle the cancellation of the formal structures of music, reaching, therefore, hypnosis the listener. Wagner isn't in the Nietzsche's view just a musician, but a German, a modern by excellence, capable of to snatch the modern soul under the leadership of artistic its brutality. From the reading of Beethoven, written in 1870 by Wagner, to that of possession of this content we will pass to focus on his own musical thinking and aesthetic of the composer, relating it to Nietzsche's work entitled O Caso Wagner, to scrutinize the parallel between an art of decadence and its hypnotic effects. (AU)