Robert Musil and the Problem of Thinking. On the epistemological aspects of literary narration

Abstract

The article analyzes the relations between artistic strategies employed by Robert Musil in his novels: The Confusions of Young Törless and The Man without Qualities, and the philosophical framework developed in his doctoral thesis and essays on the aesthetics and epistemology of literary creation. Specifi c for the philosophy of empiriociticism, the vision of the human subject as volatile and actively participating in cognition through ordering sensual data, is refl ected in Musil’s creation of literary characters devoid of „character” or „qualities” and has been conveyed through both the expressionist and impressionist narrative techniques, based on metaphorical similes, of his debut novel. Musil’s philosophy, which emphasized the notion of possibility and was close to relativism and social co nstructivism, had an effect on the artistic shape of The Man without Qualities; in this novel, the narration is characterized by ironical distance, and the epic story is restrained in favor of essayistic investigations.