Born on this date (6 November). Here is Roger Kimball’s well-known take. Here too is The Monist issue dedicated to “The Philosophy of Robert Musil” and Mette Blok’s article “Robert Musil’s Literary Ethics: The Man without Qualities Reconsidered“. Musil’s debut The Confusions of Young Törless is freely available here as is Vol. I of his masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. Last,…
In Walker Percy, Philosopher abstractioncomplexityphilosophical literatureRobert MusilScientismWalker Percy
George Ikkos has a short piece in The British Journal of Psychiatry 212: 1: 56. George IkkosMan Without Qualitiesmodernityphilosophical literaturepsychiatryRobert Musil
A recent freely available article by sociologist Bo Isenberg entitled “A modern calamity – Robert Musil on stupidity” in Journal of Classical Sociology. This voluntary subordination might be dispassionate or fanatical and relates to not only collective ideologies, nationalism and totalitarianism but also excessive rationalism. To Musil, nationalism and totalitarianism are manifestations of the most treacherous forms…
Pinker’s forthcoming bestseller which I’m expecting Taleb to eventually rip into. Despite Pinker ostensibly being a classical liberal his implicit progressivist ebullience is suspect. Epistemic humility is not seen as a cultural virtue: it is the zeitgeist of the modern age that we exist in a (misperceived) linear trajectory of progress, progress here taken to be…
Looking forward to reading this little book I’ve just acquired: Nachlass zu Lebzeiten (The posthumerous papers of a living author), 1936. I haven’t come across much commentary on it, but it is mentioned in the NYT: In these ”Posthumous Papers,” Musil’s pleasure is to start small. The first essay, ”Flypaper,” begins with an almost pedantic description…
The article examines several references to Friedrich Nietzsche made by Robert Musil in his non-fictional writings. An indication of Nietzsche’s significance for Musil is given by the fact that only one name occurs more often than Nietzsche’s in the collected works of Musil, where references to the philosopher span a period of more than forty…
a quasi-eschatological faith in historical progress Well put Damon! Here is one of the more insightful, philosophically literate and least hysterical or pompous analyses. On this topic I have written the following in a forthcoming paper. Epistemic humility is not seen as a cultural virtue: it is the zeitgeist of the modern age that we exist…
Here’s a very clear explication of the genesis of The Man Without Qualities along with an exploration of some of the central themes with some biographical detail. If ever there was a novel that’s appropriate for the prevailing fragmented times, it is this one. Der Mann ohne Eigenschaftenexistentialisml’homme sans qualitéMan Without Qualitiesphilosophical literatureRobert MusilSusanne Klingenstein
A fascinating paper. Der Mann ohne EigenschaftenImmanuel Kantphilosophical literaturephilosophy of mathematicsRobert MusilYoung Törless
manwithoutqualities 