Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”and its Contribution to Civic-ethical Education

Abstract

This research work reflects on the integral education of our secondary school students through the reading of Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain (1924). Firstly, in the light of European nihilism, formulated by Nietzsche, which has been in force for more than a century, and the philosophy of health, a theoretical framework is constructed that allows us to interpret the work from our present, its problems and challenges. The objectives focus on articulating a health pillar of an education for citizenship, fostering Platonic apagogé and civic courage against war. The qualitative methodology employs nihilism as a hermeneutic framework for a ‘reform of conscience’, unveiling the contemporary myths of youth. Two main keys of reading are developed: the necessary imbrication of ethics as a philosophical discipline; and, secondly, the consideration of the philosophy of health as an object of reflection from Classical Greece to the present day. We conclude that the thesis that philosophy of education has to design conceptually, within the framework of the so-called education for citizenship, is a primordial chapter related to health education, from the approach of caring for oneself, for the other and for others, from the appreciation of the ethics of freedom, autonomy and responsibility.