This volume explores the complex relationship between the work of Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Scholars have long appreciated the connections between Wagner and Nietzsche. However, much of the scholarly discussion has focused on the extraordinary and, to some degree, undermotivated nature of Nietzsche’s transformation from devotee and theorist of Wagner to his most extreme critic. This volume features original essays written by leading scholars that explore new topics about the Wagner-Nietzsche complex. These topics include Nietzsche’s assessment of Wagner’s dramas; the hidden motivations of Nietzsche’s break with Wagner; the influence of Wagner’s ideas in Nietzsche’s work; the Schopenhauer-Wagner-Nietzsche complex; and the concept of music in light of the Wagner-Nietzsche debate. Exploring these themes together in a single volume offers a vastly more detailed picture of the Wagner-Nietzsche relationship.

The Wagner-Nietzsche Complex will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in 19th-century German philosophy, music, and literature.

Brian O’Connor is Full Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of Idleness: A Philosophical Essay (2018), Adorno (Routledge, 2013), and Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality (2004).

Josh Torabi is a researcher and writer based in London and was formerly an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of Music and Myth in Modern Literature (Routledge, 2021).