“The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann (post 4): Protagonist, introduced as “mediocre” young man, suddenly becomes abstract philosopher

“What is time? A secret—insubstantial and omnipotent. A prerequisite of the external world, a motion intermingled and fused with bodies existing and moving in space. But would there be no time, if there were no motion? No motion, if there were no time? What a question! Is time a function of space? Or vice versa? Or are the two identical? An even bigger question! Time is active, by nature it is much like a verb, it both “ripens” and “brings forth.” And what does it bring forth? Change! Now is not then, here is not there—for in both cases motion lies in between. But since we measure time by a circular motion closed in on itself, we could just as easily say that its motion and change are rest and stagnation—for the then is constantly repeated in the now, the there in the here. Moreover, since, despite our best desperate attempts, we cannot imagine an end to time or a finite border around space, we have decided to “think” of them as eternal and infinite—in the apparent belief that even if we are not totally successful, this marks some improvement. But does not the very positing of eternity and infinity imply the logical, mathematical negation of things limited and finite, their relative reduction to zero? Is a sequence of events possible in eternity, a juxtaposition of objects in infinity? How does our makeshift assumption of eternity and infinity square with concepts like distance, motion, change, or even the very existence of a finite body in space? Now there’s a real question for you! 

Hans Castorp turned these sorts of questions over and over in his own mind—a mind that, since his arrival up here, had tended to quibble and think indiscreet thoughts of this sort and had perhaps been especially honed and emboldened for grumbling by a naughty, but overwhelming desire, for which he had now paid dearly. He asked himself these questions, asked good Joachim, even asked the valley buried under snow now since time out of mind, although he certainly never heard anything resembling an answer from any party—hard to say which was least helpful. In fact, he asked himself such questions only because he could not find any answers” (1, pp. 339-340).

Question: Does the protagonist or author have a philosophical alternate personality?

1. Thomas Mann. The Magic Mountain [1924]. Translation from the German by John E. Woods. New York, Vintage International, 1996.