DER KOBOLD DER EROTISCHEN IRONIE – PLATON‐LEKTÜREN MIT THOMAS MANN

Thomas Mann offers us a number of perspectives on Plato that so far have never been adequately described. For Mann, the artist seems to be a ʻplatonic natureʼ– not in the sense of asexual love, but as a constellation of creativity and homosexuality. Mann uses the key concept of ʻerotic ironyʼ as a kind of formula determined by Plato's philosophy of love as set out in the Symposium and Phaedrus . He was familiar with these works in the translations by Rudolf Kassner – and this means, in turn, that Mannʼs essay on Schopenhauer must also be seen in a new light.