The contribution of “time novels” to a phenomenology of temporality. Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger, and our experience of time

Abstract

Abstract This paper insists on similarities between Heidegger’s presentation of Dasein’s authentic understanding of time in Being and Time (§§ 79-80) and Thomas Mann’s attempts to “narrate time itself” in The Magic Mountain. It shows that Thomas Mann’s temporal experiments can contribute to a phenomenology of temporality, not merely by “illustrating” philosophical theses, but also by achieving something that goes beyond any phenomenological consideration on time: the enactment of fundamental temporal experiences.