The Wagnerian roots of reactionary modernism: Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and The Greek State

This article argues for an evaluation of Weimar’s reactionary modernism as having been strongly shaped by the thought of Richard Wagner. Scholarship on the ‘German Conservative Revolution’ has long recognised the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche upon reactionary modernist thinkers, particularly that of his thought - on amoral aestheticism and irrationalist vitalism. This article seeks to show that both of these facets of Nietzsche’s thought were, in turn, significantly inspired by Wagner’s vitalism, thereby establishing a line of direct influence from Wagner to the Conservative Revolutionaries like Ernst Jünger, via the intermediary figure of Nietzsche. Despite significant political disagreements between all three thinkers surveyed, their works still demonstrate a considerable amount of conceptual concordance on the doctrine of vitalism, defined here as a philosophical orientation in which life is endowed with ontological priority over the intellect. In this way, the diversity of political interpretations built around the philosophical doctrine of vitalism is highlighted, and the seldom-considered relationship between Wagner and reactionary modernism is illuminated.