Re: Gobineau, the "Bayreuth Circle" and Schemann

Wagner's response to these ideas begins on page 280. His answer
derives from four principles:
* The white races have no monopoly of compassion, or the awareness or
endurance of suffering [page 281, Ellis edition];
* Christ and his sacrifice seem to have been called into existence by
all of humanity, as part of a "will to redemption" [page 282];
* Christ was part of every one of the human races, and his sacrifice
was not for one race but for all of humanity [page 280 and page 283];
* Everyone, in every race, can redeem themselves (even achieve
"heroism") by partaking of Christ's blood [page 283].

Wagner is seldom admirable or enlightened on the subject of race, so
his next comment is quite surprising. He admitted that the idea of
racial uniformity seemed horrifying to his readers and to himself, but
said that this was because people can only think from inside the "fog
of our own civilisation and culture", and people need to look outside
that culturally conditioned perspective.

I used the words "racial uniformity" in the paraphrase above. Ellis'
translation used the words "racial equality", which is not wrong, but
since Ellis' time those two words have taken on a specific meaning
that was not Wagner intended. Wagner didn't mean "equal rights and
enlightened anti-discrimination laws"; rather he meant the future
described by Gobineau, in which all distinction between white and
yellow and black people had been lost through interbreeding.
Gobineau's nightmare is quite well captured in the 1969 hit, "Melting
Pot", the chorus of which goes:

"What we need is a great big melting pot; 
Big enough, big enough, big enough 
To take the world and all it's got; 
Keep it stirring for a hundred years or more,
Turning out coffee-coloured people by the score."   

Except that where that prospect horrified Gobineau, "Melting Pot"
celebrates it. Gobineau wouldn't have been a Blue Mink fan, I suspect.

For a long time I've been puzzled by Wagner's apparent piety at the
end of "Heroism and Christianity". It's clear that Wagner meant to
reject Gobineau's racism, and to argue that allow all people of all
races could again achieve "heroism" in the sense indicated above,
through the sacrifice of Christ.

But exactly how was the sacrifice of Christ going to help? The
orthodox answer would be that people receive divine favour when they
join the flock of the lamb; the Christian god would look after us.

But that seems unlikely to have been Wagner's position. Wagner was not
generally a believer in the supernatural, which means he was hardly an
orthodox Christian. So it's hard to think that he really meant that
the Christian god existed and would intervene to redeem us, provided
we took part in communion rituals. In "Heroism and Christianity" he
praised Brahminism, but declared it inferior to Christianity, saying
it was a race-based religion which privileged one racial group over
another, while Christianity was for all humanity. That is, Wagner
didn't favour Christianity over Brahminism because Christianity was
more "true"; he favoured Christianity over Brahminism on the
essentially moral and practical grounds that Christianity is not
racist, while (he said) Brahminism is.

So if the attractive feature of Christianity is not the truth of its
supernatural doctrines, how exactly did Wagner think that the
sacrifice of Christ would help us to redeem ourselves? Part of the
answer is in Wagner's suggestion that Christ was called into existence
by humanity itself, which recognised the need for such a moral
exemplar. That is, Christ was not given to humanity by a deity, but
called up by humanity out of humanity's own resources. (Here I'm
paraphrasing sections of pages 280 and 281).

There's an obvious Schopenhauerian aspect to Wagner's idea that Christ
was called into existence by the human will, in this case a will to
redemption. Which I suppose meant that the cultural conditions and the
ideals were there, both for Christ's life to occur and for it to
become idealised as the basis for a religion. There's more to be said
about Schopenhauerian influences in "Heroism and Christianity", but
not in this post. (And perhaps not by me.)

The other part of Wagner's answer is the need of all humanity to
recognise Christ's example of selfless service, sacrifice and
renunciation. So we are not saved by a god, or by a race-based
religion, but through a human morality based on Christian ideas of
compassion, under which all races can achieve equality and morality,
regenerate themselves to a state that allows heroism, in Wagner's
sense, to return, and the immorality of exploitation of one race by
another can be avoided.


In summary, Wagner says that even if Gobineau were right about
interbreeding having been harmful, we can recover in a way that does
not require us to take notice of race, that allows us ultimately to
embrace racial equality, and possible racial uniformity. In a sense
what "Heroism and Christianity" says in response to Gobinism is that
even if Gobineau's premises were granted, Gobineau's conclusions and
his ethical perspective are still wrong. Or more succinctly: "Even if
it's right, it's still wrong."

Cheers!


Laon