What Wotan Wants 
Jerry Fodor
- Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner’s ‘Ring’ by Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht
Wagner’s operas in general, and the Ring cycle in particular, have been goading the criticising classes into print for a century and a half, with still no end in sight, but the sacrifice of all those trees has produced very little in the way of a critical consensus; not even on such basic matters as what the Ring is about. Many of the enthusiasts I know hold that there really isn’t anything that the Ring is about. It is, they say, a bald tale, lacking verisimilitude, and populated by an unlikely gaggle of dwarves, giants, dragons, talking birds, flying horses, love potions, magic helmets and shopworn Norse deities. Neophytes are advised to close their eyes and listen to the music (remarkable by any standards) but not to read the supertitles.
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Jerry Fodor is collaborating with Massimo Piattelli-Palamarini on a book about evolution without adaptation.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism · Pinker and Plotkin
Why Pigs Don’t Have Wings · The Case against Natural Selection
Let your brain alone · why the brain?
Headaches have themselves · Panpsychism
Look! · Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson
Who ate the salted peanuts? · Michael Frayn
Neither Egypt, nor Italy, nor Broadway, nor Theatre · Jerry Fodor sees the Elton John and Tim Rice reworking of Aida
Water’s water everywhere · Kripke
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