r in which Germans are protecting their superior culture from the inferior democracies now attacking their country.
The arguments offered by Mann are not simple and are not easily reduced to a simple statement or conclusion. He sees society as a number of inter-related expressions in art, literature, and political action. For a man who was previously nonpolitical, Mann shows here a strong sense of the political nature of all social acts, from speaking in public to writing a book or painting a portrait. Such acts do not take place in a vacuum. Instead, they take place within the prevailing culture and thus bring with them a long cultural history. In Germany this history includes Schiller and Schopenhauer, Goethe and Nietzsche, a long history of religious, social, literary, aesthetic, and political thought. Interestingly
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