Der pessimistische Humanismus: Thomas Manns lebensphilosophische Adaption der Schopenhauerschen Mitleidsethik by Thomas Klugkist (review)

Abstract

MLRy 99.1, 2004 255 The second part of the book is more coherently argued. Here Hermann pursues close readings of the two 'Kindheit' poems, the fragmentary elegy 'LaB dir, daB Kindheit war, diese namenlose', and 'Das (nicht vorhandene) Kindergrab mit dem Ball', showing how, in their attempts to represent childhood, these texts?all written at points of transition in Rilke's career?'erzahlen und zeigen eine Geschichte des Figurationsprozesses' (p. 160). Although there is plenty to take issue with in the detail of Hermann's analysis, the view that the poems about childhood are allegories of the poetic process itself seems plausible, and the careful and thought-provoking readings she offersare one of the main strengths of the study. Despite its flaws, this is a stimulating and readable book. The writing is lucid and concise, and the footnotes, arguments with other critics, and bibliography have been kept to a minimum. University of Exeter Helen Bridge Der pessimistische Humanismus: Thomas Manns lebensphilosophische Adaption der Schopenhauer sehen Mitleidsethik. By Thomas Klugkist. (Epistemata Literaturwissenschaft , 415) Wiirzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2002. 113 pp. ?17.50. ISBN 3-8260-2163-0 (pbk). How, Schopenhauer wondered in his Parerga und Paralipomena, can vivisectionists sleep soundly at night, in the knowledge that they have locked up harmless animals in order to starve them to death? Do they not wake up screaming in the night? The central element of Schopenhauer's ethics is the concept of pity (Mitleid) and, in this book, Thomas Klugkist examines the tension between optimism and pessimism in the work of Thomas Mann and in the light of his interest in Schopenhauer. As well as completing the trilogy begun in 1995 with Gliihende Konstruktion (Wiirzburg: Ko? nigshausen & Neumann, 1995) and Sehnsuchtskosmogonie (Wiirzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 2000) (studies of Tristan and Doktor Faustus in relation to Mann's reception of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wagner), this study continues Klugkist's reading of Mann with reference to the German 'tradition' to which Schopenhauer, and also Nietzsche, belong. It takes the form ofa 'leitmotivische Analyse' ofthe ideas which, in his essay entitled 'Schopenhauer' (1938), Mann firstcalled 'pessimistischer Humanismus' (quoted p. 11). But if, some twenty years earlier, Mann had claimed in his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen that there was something peculiarly German about seeing life in terms of practical ethics ('es ist deutsch, den Radikalismus ins Geistige zu verweisen und dem Leben gebeniiber praktisch-ethisch, anti-radikal sich zu verhalten' (cited pp. 28 and 43)), then, ten years after the Schopenhauer essay, Mann would argue (in his letter of 23 December 1948 to Warren Allen Smith) that the 'classical humanism' of Goethe and Schiller was, at least as an 'intellectual form', no longer possible. Instead, Mann sought to replace it by a 'new humanism', 'a humanism which derives its pride from the unique and mysterious position of man between nature and mind' (quoted p. 83). A constant reference point for Mann in all his writings was Goethe, whose maxim to the effectthat 'ein gutes Kunstwerk kann und wird zwar moralische Folgen haben, aber moralische Zwecke von Kiinstler fordern, heiBt ihm sein Handwerk verderben ' (Dichtung und Wahrheit, 111.12) is interpreted by Klugkist as meaning that 'die reale Gerechtigkeit [galt] in den innersten Bezirken der asthetischen Arbeit [. . .] als ein immerhin bemerkenswertes Nebenprodukt des zentralen Bemiihens um poeti? sche Gerechtigkeit' (p. 39) (although the passage from Betrachtungen which Klugkist then cites in support might be thought to argue something slightly different). Within Weimar Classicism, however, the moral and the aesthetic are indeed separate cate? gories, but the relationship of the latter to the former is rather more precise. In his 256 Reviews Asthetische Briefe, for example, Schiller speaks of the aesthetic as a precondition for truly moral behaviour in humankind: 'Freiheit', he argues in Letter xvn. 4, 'liegt nur in der Zusammenwirkung seiner beiden Naturen' (and see Letter xxm. 5). Although Mann did write in 'Nietzsches Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung' (1947) that 'der wahre Gegensatz ist der von Ethik und Asthetik', this remark has to be seen in the context of his attempt to counter Nietzsche's opposition of life and morality; in his earlier sketches for the unfinished project 'Geist und Kunst' (1909-10), Mann understood well the relationship between...