Abstract

Richard Wagner's animal ethics is an underresearched issue within Wagner scholarship. In this article, I aim to fill this gap. In particular, I will demonstrate that, by drawing on Schopenhauer's philosophy, Wagner indicated a path to elaborate an animal ethics. First, I will reconstruct Schopenhauer's animal ethics, showing how it was deeply imbued with tenets of Brahmanism and Buddhism. Second, I will deal with Wagner's animal ethics, illustrating its indebtedness to Schopenhauer.