Abstract
Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, is the story of how the Norse god Wotan tried to save his world by creating a human hero with free will who could do things that Wotan could not.1 But by creating free humans Wotan ensured that, in the final scene ofGötterdämmerung, the Norse gods were destroyed by fire in Valhalla and the world passed to human control.
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” - Voltaire
Wotan’s speeches in Scenes 1 and 2, Act II, Die Walküre. Weisman,2000.
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Hibbard, B. (2002). Götterdämmerung. In: Super-Intelligent Machines. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0759-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0759-8_1
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