#  Jan-Paul Sandmann 

 



   ![Jan-Paul Sandmann](/sites/g/files/omnuum1106/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2024-07/Jan-Paul%20Sandmann_17_C49A9769.jpg?itok=iQ1EZiP5) 

 

Jan-Paul Sandmann is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government, specializing in political theory.

By drawing on the thought of Thomas Mann—and placing his ideas in conversation with alternatives developed by Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Richard Rorty, and Arthur Danto—he explores questions about the role of art in society. In his dissertation, *The Promise of Art and Its Crisis*, he argues that Mann develops an aesthetic of ambivalence and irony that seeks to channel longings for meaning into the kind of sensibility liberal politics requires. The dissertation subjects Mann’s humanistic liberalism to scrutiny and asks whether it continues to hold appeal today. In the course of doing so, it investigates what the promise of art consists in, how even pessimistic cultural criticism might serve as a resource for liberal politics, what significance the idea of art’s end bears on the present, and how a position like Mann’s might speak to a media environment radically different from his own.

At Harvard, he is an Edmond J. Safra Graduate Fellow in Ethics, 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. During the course of his studies, he has received scholarships from the *Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes*, the Theodore H Ashford Graduate Fellowship, Harvard's *Center for European Studies*, the *Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics*, and the *Society of Friends of Bayreuth*. His work has been published by *Philosophy & Social Criticism*, *Synthese*, and *Politics & Poetics*.

#### Publications

Sandmann, JP. [On Art and Liberalism: Thomas Mann and the Appeal of Ambiguity](https://www.politicsandpoetics.co.uk/_files/ugd/4ebe61_0c27e601c21b4a57801cbb69fd6d1d65.pdf). *Politics & Poetics* Vol. 6, 119-149 (2025).

Sandmann, JP. [Caught between morality and art: Susan Sontag on metaphors of illness](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/01914537251377668). *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](https://rdcu.be/c9fNy). *Synthese* 201, 137 (2023).

 Featured on [Imperfect Cognitions](https://imperfectcognitions.blogspot.com/2023/07/irrationality-and-indecision.html) in July 2023.