The Magic Mountain: Part 6, Chapter 6: Operationes Spirituales Summary & Analysis

“Operationes Spirituales” opens with a summary of Naphta’s background, as he explains it to Hans. Leo Naphta comes from a small town between Galicia and Volhynia. His father, Elia Naphta, is the village shohet (similar to a Christian butcher), responsible for slaughtering animals according to the rules of the Talmud. While Christian butchers typically hit the animal over the head before slaughtering them, which is supposed to allow for a more humane death, the rules of the Talmud require Elia to kill the animal while it’s still fully conscious. Though religious, Elia also criticizes the Torah and frequently argues with the rabbi. The town regards him as someone special, someone unorthodox. Elia dies during a pogrom carried out in response to the unexplained deaths of two  Christian children—he’s found hanging outside his burning house, crucified to the door.  

After Elia’s death, Naphta’s mother takes the children and flees to the small town of Vorarlberg, where her children attend grammar school. Naphta is a precocious child and an excellent student, and he catches the attention of the local rabbi, who starts to tutor him. But in time, Naphta’s rebellious streak upsets the rabbi, who ultimately severs their relationship after Naphta makes friends with the son of a social-democratic member of the Reichsrat and starts caring more about social criticism than logic. Naphta’s mother dies around this time, and not long after that, he meets Father Unterpertinger, the Jesuit priest who takes Naphta under his wing.

Father Unterpertinger and Naphta talk about Marx, Hegel, and about the central role that politics plays in Catholicism. At the end of their first meeting, Father Unterpertinger invites Naphta to visit him at his school, the Stella Matutina, and Naphta finds that the Judaism he was brought up with is not so different from Catholicism, with both religions valuing practicality and possessing a “political spirituality.” Naphta becomes eager to convert, and he’s soon baptized, after which he starts attending the Jesuit school. Life at the school is full of both calm and intellectual rigor, and Naphta takes to it immediately. Eventually, he decides to study theology and would like to join the order.

But Naphta’s health worsens over the years. His nights are occupied with operations, spirituals, or “examinations of conscience,” which he takes seriously and which fill him with lots of frustrations and uncertainties. He tries to tell this to his mentor, but the only advice he receives is to “pray for his soul to find peace.” When he does find this peace, he struggles with the realization that the process “dulls” him and can only be achieved “by way of physical ruin.” Still, his mentors don’t judge him for his doubts, and he eventually graduates and heads to the Jesuit college in Holland to begin his theology studies.

But the climate of Holland and the intensity of Naphta’s studies destroys his health, forcing him to drop out. He returns to the boarding school, planning to resume his university studies after a few years. But due to his extremely poor health, his superiors decide it would be best for him not to return to Holland, instead teaching pupils someplace with a more favorable climate. That’s how he ended up at Davos-Dorf, where he’s beginning his sixth year teaching at a local school for tubercular boys.

Hans learns Naphta’s backstory gradually during his visits to the man’s living quarters. He thinks Naphta’s backstory is honorable and encourages Ferge and Wehsal, who accompany him, to think so too, though Wehsal thinks it’s rather unfortunate that Naphta’s life seems to be in a rut at the moment. Hans thinks so too, and it makes him miss “honor-loving Joachim,” who managed to get out of his rut. Hans thinks that Naphta and Joachim are actually quite similar: both swore an oath to an organization that values “asceticism and hierarchy.” And both the Jesuits and the military value attacking the enemy for the betterment of the world rather than protecting oneself. But the most important similarity between Naphta’s and Joachim’s worlds, to Hans, is their willingness to kill. And this is something that Hans, as a pacificist, cannot understand.

One day around Christmas, Hans, Naphta, Settembrini, Ferge, and Wehsal are all walking  through town when they start arguing about health and sickness. The conversation starts because a resident named Karen Karstedt has recently died. Hans expresses his regret at not being able to participate in her funeral (Hans loves funerals), and this prompts Settembrini to make a sarcastic remark about Hans’s earlier practice of visiting the Berghof’s most severe cases. When Hans notes that most of the people he visited are now dead, Settembrini mockingly asks whether Hans finds them “more respectable” that way. This sends Naphta on a spiel about religious fanatics’ acts of excessive religious charity in the Middle Ages, describing women who would kiss the wounds of lepers and not get sick.

Settembrini cuts in to argue that the sick don’t deserve sympathy from the healthy. Such sympathy derives from the misconception that a sick person is a healthy person dealing with undeserved illness. In reality, though, a sick person is just a sick person. Settembrini has little patience for sick people who demand others’ sympathies. He also argues that “madness” is really just what happens when a person lets themselves go. Settembrini claims to have brought mad people back to sanity simply by confronting them with logic. Naphta laughs at this, but Hans believes Settembrini and can even imagine him healing the mad this way.

Naphta then contributes his opposing viewpoint, describing how in the Middle Ages the Church saw suffering as a form of “religious affirmation.” Sore-covered flesh, he explains, would remind people of the soul’s corrupt state. As they walk, Hans remains stuck between Settembrini and Naphta, the former praising the human body and the latter deeming it an obstacle between humans and eternal salvation. Hans finds himself physically turning back and forth, agreeing with one and then agreeing with the other.

Eventually the conversation drifts to more relevant, real-world subjects like the death penalty and torture. Settembrini condemns the use of torture. Naphta supports it, though, arguing that “true honor [i]s based in the Spirit” and that inflicting pain on the flesh is an effective way to show the soul that it should derive pleasure from the “spiritual realm” rather than the physical body.

Gradually, the argument gets more heated as its focus shifts back toward matters of life, death, and illness. Settembrini reaffirms his position that there is nothing noble about illness because it reduces a human “to a mere body” and is therefore inhuman and ignoble. Naphta, on the other hand, replies that illness is in fact very human, since “man [i]s ill by nature” compared to God. Settembrini attacks Naphta for claiming that “illness and death are noble” whereas “health and life are sordid.” The more they argue and the more strange terms and phrases they toss back and forth, the more confused Hans gets—and the more Ferge and Wehsal lose interest. Eventually, they part ways with Settembrini and Naphta at their lodging house and return to the Berghof. Hans returns to his balcony and considers the two opposing viewpoints that have called him to “the confused tumult of battle.”