Jan-Paul Sandmann

Jan-Paul Sandmann

Doctoral Fellow

Period at the center: May 2026 – August 2027

Research Project: The Promise of Art: Thomas Mann and the Search for a Humanistic Liberalism

Email: jsandmann@fas.harvard.edu

Website

Jan-Paul Sandmann is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Harvard’s Department of Government. Drawing on the thought of Thomas Mann and Theodor W. Adorno, his dissertation project “A Crisis in Art” examines the role art could and should play in our lives. At Harvard, he is a Graduate Affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and has assisted in teaching a course on the German philosophical tradition from Nietzsche to Habermas, as well as undergraduate and graduate-level classes in moral and political philosophy.

He holds a B.Sc. in Government and Economics and an M.Sc. in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, both from the London School of Economics. His work has been published by Philosophy & Social Criticism, Synthese, and Politics & Poetics. 

Research Project

The Promise of Art: Thomas Mann and the Search for a Humanistic Liberalism

In my doctoral thesis, The Promise of Art: Thomas Mann and the Search for a Humanistic Politics, I argue that Thomas Mann develops an aesthetic of ambivalence and irony well suited to cultivating the sensibility a liberal politics requires. By reconstructing Mann’s position across his literary and political writings, I show that his steadfast commitment to Kultur provides the basis for a humanistic vision of liberalism in which art and cultural criticism play a central role. For Mann, an art that resists reduction to any single political program trains us to appreciate the tensions among competing views. Most intriguingly, his account offers resources for thinking through the challenges that contemporary forms of social aestheticization pose to pluralist politics, challenges that standard liberal theories that remain indifferent to art’s social role often overlook. Through a series of contrasts with sympathetic and critical interlocutors, including Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Richard Rorty, and Arthur Danto, I subject Mann’s view to scrutiny and test where its continued appeal might lie.

Selected publications

Articles

Sandmann, JP. On Art and Liberalism: Thomas Mann and the Appeal of Ambiguity. Politics & Poetics Vol. 6, 119-149 (2025).

Sandmann, JP. Caught between morality and art: Susan Sontag on metaphors of illness. Philosophy & Social Criticism (2025, Online First).

Sandmann, JP. The Promise of Art: Mann and Adorno on Wagner, Almanach 2025, Gesellschaft der Freunde von Bayreuth.

Sandmann, JP. Irrationality and Indecision. Synthese 201, 137 (2023).

Featured on Imperfect Cognitions in July 2023.