ABSTRACT
One of Michael Tanner's most significant contributions to British intellectual life has been his advocacy of the music of Richard Wagner. The Feuerbachian ontology is fundamental to the mythic structure of The Ring. The ring is not money, but all that money means to us – the concentration of power that results when our labour is devoted to exchange and accumulation. The Ring becomes a symbol, not merely of money and accumulation, but of an outlook on the world which disregards the personality of people. Love, in The Ring, means two different things: the need implanted by the species – that natural force which spreads its fickle attentions far and wide – and the longing which is also an existential choice, a meeting of self and other and an assumption of responsibility for another life. In the world of mortals, however, freedom is a prelude to love, and therefore to a return to the natural order.
