15 - Doktor Faustus: A New Perspective

Summary

Der intellektuelle Gedanke im Kunstwerk wird nicht verstanden, wenn man ihn als Zweck seiner selbst versteht; er ist nicht literarisch zu werten, — was selbst raffinierte Kritiker zuweilen vergessen oder nicht wissen; er ist zweckhaft in Hinsicht auf die Komposition, er will und bejaht sich selbst nur in Hinsicht auf diese, er kann banal sein, absolut und literarisch genommen, aber geistreich innerhalb der Komposition. (BeU, 229)

DOKTOR FAUSTUS IS NOT A PHILOSOPHICAL TRACT; it is a novel. It is an unusual novel in that the action is largely in the dialogue, but action it is, nevertheless. The fundamental underlying argument, that Catholic humanism is a secularization of the medieval approach to social control and nineteenth-century humanism is a secularization of the values of the Reformation, is illustrated over and over again in a multiplicity of practical applications. All of these episodes are simply variations on this one basic theme. They each show how opinion about whatever is being talked about depends on the position of the speaker with respect to this fundamental opposition. The theme itself is an opposition and, by its very nature, requires, in each instance, two views that are at variance with each other.

The culmination of the novel is the rise of National Socialism. The novel is, therefore, meant to be an illustration of intellectual acceptance or rejection of National Socialism as a function of the attitudes and predispositions prevalent in the intellectual environment of the time, rather than as a specifically political decision taken by any of the characters.