The goals of this dissertation are: (1) to establish the multivalent nature of the term humanism, particularly as it has been understood and deployed in the last century; (2) to characterize the humanist orientation of Hermann Broch (1886-1951), Erich Kahler (1885-1970) and Thomas Mann (1875-1955), to (3) to trace the emergence of these humanist orientations out of ideological stances that can be categorized by a related constellation of terms such as conservative, reactionary, culturally pessimistic, anti-modern, anti-humanist; (4) to argue that remnants of these earlier ideologies remain in slightly altered forms in the later works of all three writers and work to undermine the ostensible goals of their writing (which are, among others, to act as a counterweight to fanaticism writ large, to engender ethical attitudes toward political problems, to encourage the formation of democratic governments, to conceive of the work of art from a humanist perspective); (5) ultimately to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the history of humanism in Germany in the twentieth century.
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