Abstract

Martin Seel once made a very derogatory comment on Thomas Mann’s ›Doktor Faustus‹, which can also be called »Nietzsche novel«. I take this as an opportunity to appreciate, in a broader perspective, a thinking born from historical experience and cultural sensitivity in the context of Adorno and Nietzsche. Thomas Mann’s confrontation with the ambivalence of modernity, motivated by National Socialism, points to an unsurpassable intellectual imprint that he shares with Adorno’s experience-bound philosophy. Adorno’s theory of art is aptly corrected by Martin Seel with regard to its aesthetic utopia, but at the same time the affirmative potential of art is vindicated. Following Adorno, art is capable of opening up experiences in its own way that can also provide impulses for politics. This can equally be said about Thomas Mann’s ›Faustus‹.