4: The Essays

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Preface vii
4. Introduction: Musil’s Intellectual Position 1
5. Part I. Musil and the Two Cultures
6. 1: The Question of Science 13
7. 2: Musil, Ernst Mach, and the Problem of Causality 32
8. 3: Musil’s Theory of Vision 51
9. 4: The Essays 63
10. Part II. Aesthetics and Ethics in the Context of the Two Cultures
11. 5: Modernity’s Crisis 77
12. 6: Musil’s Concept of Value 92
13. 7: Unions: “An Episode of More than Merely Personal Significance” 110
14. 8: The Problem of Trust in The Man Without Qualities 122
15. 9: Musil’s Correspondence Project: The Man Without Qualities and The Blackbird 135
16. Conclusion: “A General Secretariat of Precision and Soul”: Ethics, Knowledge, and Literature after the Fourth Revolution 149
17. References 161
18. Index 169