Published in 1913, Thomas Mann's "Death in Venic"e is one of the
most widely read novellas in any language. In the 1970s, Benjamin
Britten adapted it into an opera, and Luchino Visconti turned it
into a successful film. Reading these works from a philosophical
perspective, Philip Kitcher connects the predicament of the
novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling
questions.
In Mann's story, the author Gustav von Aschenbach becomes
captivated by an adolescent boy, first seen on the lido in Venice,
the eventual site of Aschenbach's own death. Mann works through
central concerns about how to live, explored with equal intensity
by his German predecessors, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Kitcher
considers how Mann's, Britten's, and Visconti's treatments
illuminate the tension between social and ethical values and an
artist's sensitivity to beauty. Each work asks whether a life
devoted to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements
can be sustained and whether the breakdown of discipline undercuts
its worth. Haunted by the prospect of his death, Aschenbach also
helps us reflect on whether it is possible to achieve anything in
full awareness of our finitude and in knowing our successes are
always incomplete.
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