quote · Legacy record
Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the "Critical-Subjective," where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp's civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha's "morally chaotic All.
Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the "Critical-Subjective," where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp's civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha's "morally chaotic All.
Approximate author period: c. 1915 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Thomas Mann
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1915 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1875 to 1955; Wikidata Q37030, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q37030 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 263964; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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