ABSTRACT
Richard Wagner’s role as the philosophical father of Viennese modernism has been completely overlooked by cultural historians. In fact, it was Wagner and neither Ernst Mach nor Friedrich Nietzsche, who delivered the metaphysical and epistemological foundations for Viennese aestheticism. In order to articulate such an irrationalist, mechanistic view of aesthetic creativity Wagner borrows liberally from Arthur Schopenhauer, whom he frequently exploits for his own purposes. Wagner’s view of artistic creativity is, then, entirely Romantic and irrationalistic in nature. The artist creates his achievement out of the depths of his unfathomable intuition. The concept of aesthetics that emerges from this discussion is entirely symbolist. The dubious element in Schorske’s view of Nietzsche is closely related to the American historian’s view of the Secession’s Beethoven Exhibition of 1902. Schorske’s work on Vienna is characterized by a laudable concern for iconography.
