Ethical and Philosophical-Anthropological Ideas in Robert Musil's Novel "The Man Without Qualities"

Essayistic novel “The Man without Qualities” (1930–1943) by Austrian writer Robert Musil is unanimously considered as a masterpiece of modernist literature. It contains the conglomeration of observations and thoughts on human nature, its ethical foundations, and the disruption of the organic connection between them which became obvious to the beginning of the XXth century. The key example of such disruption in the novel is intellect. Relying on the theories of Musil’s philosophical mentors – Friedrich Nietzsche and Ernst Mach – and the writings of Musil himself, I begin my thesis with the analysis of how the axiological element initially was present in the intellectual activity and how it was lost. According to Musil, the social realization of a person was possible due to attribution of sacred position to some cultural realities. (the sense of involvement in the sacred is called a “soul” in the novel), and the departure of the value principle from public life entailed difficulties in making decisions. In direct connection with the theory of the constitutive role of the representatives of the sacred is the author's anthropological "theorem of human formlessness". A man, according to Musil, is formed through cultural, ethical and intellectual experience coming from outside in their unity. The predominance of a “sense of reality” (Wirklichkeitsinn) in obtaining this experience leads to an overestimation of the existent cultural forms and norms (characteristic of the “soul”), identification of oneself with them, unreasonable determination and cruelty. Concession to static principles contradicts the original dynamism and metaphorism of any cultural forms and norms, their experience as “the other state” (andere Zustand). An alternative to a “sense of reality” is a “sense of possibility” (Möglichkeitssinn), in which the focus is not on “the infinity of an object” (that is, its sacredness and immutability), but on “the infinity of relations between objects” —Musil calls this the sphere of Spirit (Geist). Musil’s notion of Spirit uniquely combines the Hegel’s teaching of the World Spirit, manifesting itself in the historical process through the struggle and synthesis of opposing trends, and Mach’s philosophy of science, which accepts not permanent elements, but functional relations between them. The sphere of Spirit implies ethical perspectivism. The key to the sphere of Spirit is the “significant” (Bedeutende), accessible both to intellect and emotions, and the poet (Dichter) is a researcher of the significant. In our work, we considered options for the renewal of the “sense of reality” with its inherent sacralization (“great idea”, “great things”) and irrationalism. In the prospect of further research, a continuation of the analysis of the “sense of possibility” in the novel remains.