Thomas Mann's
Doctor Faustus
How art lost its innocence
"I have discovered that it ought not be."
"What ought not be, Adrian?"
"The good and the noble," he replied, "what people call human, even though it is good and noble -it ought not be. It will be taken back. I shall take it back."
"I don't quite understand, my dear fellow. What do you want to take back?"
"Beethoven's Ninth Symphony," he replied.
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- Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus -
Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus: How art lost its innocence
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What remains of art when a civilisation undergoes moral collapse?
That question lies at the heart of this course.
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Shortly after the Second World War, the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor W. Adorno famously argued that art had irreversibly lost its innocence. Was it still possible to write poetry after Auschwitz? How could artistic creation be justified once it had become entangled with a culture that culminated in barbarism? This rupture — between art and the values that had sustained it for centuries — forms the point of departure for this course.​
Is art complicit in the greatest barbarity the world has ever known?
Mann, Adorno and the crisis of art
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Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1947) can be read as an extended literary engagement with Adorno’s thesis. The novel follows the life of the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn, who enters into a Faustian pact with the devil in pursuit of radical artistic renewal. His quest for absolute originality becomes a mirror of the cultural and moral disintegration of twentieth-century Germany.
A novel that not only describes the cultural bankruptcy of an era, but confronts its most profound existential questions.
Mann and Adorno were personally acquainted. At the time Mann was writing the novel, both lived in exile in Los Angeles. Their conversations on art, morality, and modernity form the philosophical backbone of Doctor Faustus — a context that is essential for a deeper understanding of the novel.
What makes this course distinctive?
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This course approaches Doctor Faustus not only as a literary work, but also from philosophical and art-historical perspectives. We examine fundamental questions about the nature of art and its shifting role within society, and situate Mann’s novel within key developments in modern culture, including:
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the break with tradition and the modern pursuit of innovation and originality
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the emergence of the Romantic image of the artist: gifted, visionary, and troubled
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the rise of abstraction and the increasing intellectualisation of art
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the merging of art and popular culture in the decades following the Second World War
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The result is an approach that illuminates Mann’s novel while placing its themes within a broader cultural and historical framework that remains deeply relevant today.
Structure of the course​
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Each session consists of three parts:
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1. Contextual grounding
We discuss the philosophical and art-historical background necessary to situate the novel. Through concrete examples from visual art, literature, and music, participants gain insight into the development of modern art itself.
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2. Reading the novel
We examine how Mann translates this intellectual world into literature, and how it takes form in the tragic life of Adrian Leverkühn.
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3. Discussion
We place the novel alongside our own time. What does Doctor Faustus reveal about art today? About responsibility, innovation, and the relationship between art and politics? And how does this shape our own thinking about the role of art in society?
Who is this course for?
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Doctor Faustus is an exceptionally rich and demanding novel — one that can deeply affect its readers and permanently alter how they think about art. This course is for those who seek an intense and lasting literary experience, who wish to understand the philosophical and art-historical roots of modern art, and who do not shy away from an intellectual challenge that both provokes and inspires.
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- writing - ​
