Martha Nussbaum
Die Zauberflöte. Mozart and the Freemasons
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Opera is and does many wonderful things, but one of the things that it most definitely does is engage in political thought. Mozart’s work exemplifies this. As a committed man of the Enlightenment, he was an active member of the Freemasons in Vienna, writing several works for his lodge and suffusing his operas with their Enlightenment spirit of freedom, equality, and fraternal love, ideals which naturally put him in conversation with thinkers like Rousseau, Kant, and Herder. There is, however, something distinct about Mozart’s republicanism: it is a republicanism of the heart. By this, I mean that Mozart understood that realizing enlightenment values involves more than outward institutional reform; it also requires that we become a new type of person, one who doesn’t rely on fear or anger but on compassion. By paying particular attention to Mozart’s music rather than to the textual narrative of the libretti, we discover the rejection of any morality driven by honor and revenge and a deep commitment to the Freemasonic ideas of brotherhood, equality, and mercy.
Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, jointly appointed in the Law School and Philosophy Department. She received her BA from NYU and her MA and PhD from Harvard, and has taught at Harvard University, Brown University, and Oxford University. Her scholarly work is wide-ranging and numerous, including contributions to Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, feminism, music, law, disability studies, and animal rights. She has chaired the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on International Cooperation, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Committee for Public Philosophy, and was President of the Central Division from 1999 to 2000. An author of more than twenty-five books and 500 academic articles, she has also received honorary degrees from sixty-nine colleges and universities across the globe. Her work has been recognized by the Berggruen Prize in Philosophy and Culture, the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, the Holberg Prize, and the Balzan Prize. Her lecture at the Einstein Forum is based on a forthcoming book about the relationship between opera and the Enlightenment.