Understanding Fact and Fiction in Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities

Abstract

The sex murderer Moosbrugger, whose mental competence to stand trial is at the heart of Robert Musil’s novel The Man without Qualities, attracts our attention to the scientific debate on determinism that has captivated legal scholars since the late nineteenth century. This debate raises the question of the dehumanization of scientific rationality in matters concerning the treatment of the criminally insane. The nineteenth-century concept of law as science led to a profound belief in the transparency of objective knowledge that Weber referred to as the disenchantment of the world. This article focuses on the blurring of the borders between fact and fiction by means of an analysis of The Man without Qualities. Its aim is to highlight the Erklaren-Verstehen controversy that lies at the heart of the epistemological debate and the methodological struggle between the natural sciences and the humanities at the end of the nineteenth century, one that has had far-reaching implications for law and literature.