Arthur Schnitzler's Typology: An Excursion into Philosophy

Abstract

Arthur Schnitzler's non-fictional works have been sorely neglected in critical literature, even by those writers who have attempted to evaluate his “Weltanschauung.” His essays and aphorisms have thus on the whole remained almost completely unknown, although a few are readily accessible. One of these works, Über Krieg und Frieden, was published posthumously in 1939 and contains excerpts from Schnitzler's diaries during the years 1915–19. Another is the Buck der Sprücke und Bedenken, a collection of aphorisms published in 1927. Individual sections are not dated and, from the evidence of unpublished material in Schnitzler's “NachlaC,” may be assumed to span his entire creative life. Some of the ideas are fragmentary, often the result of momentary moods, and there are internal contradictions. Schnitzler himself was aware of this, and in the foreword he expressly warned that “dieses Buch will keine Système, keine Weltanschauungen, keine Erledi-gungen bringen,” and added: “Keineswegs hat dieses Buch den Ehrgeiz, für sich allein zu bestehen.” Nonetheless, certain thoughts occur with astonishing regularity—certain “ideas and questions” about “fate and free will,” about “responsibility and conscience,” about “relationships and loneliness,” to quote some of the chapter headings.