Daisy’s Reviews > The Case of Wagner / Nietzsche Contra Wagner / Selected Aphorisms > Status Update

As a matter of fact, his whole life long, he did nothing but repeat one proposition: that his music did not mean music alone! But something more! Something immeasurably more!… “ Not music alone ”— no musician would speak in this way.

—As to what Goethe would have thought of Wagner?—Goethe once set himself the question, “what danger hangs over all romanticists—the fate of romanticists?”—His answer was: “To choke over the rumination of moral and religious absurdities.”

Anyone else may perhaps be able to get on without Wagner: but the philosopher is not free to pass him by. The philosopher must be the evil conscience of his age,—but to this end he must be possessed of its best knowledge.