97:1 January 2014
The Philosophy of Robert Musil

Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2013
Advisory Editor: Bence Nanay (University of Antwerp) (bn206@cam.ac.uk)

Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is one of the most important novels of the 20th century. But Musil was also a philosopher, and after completion of his dissertation on Ernst Mach in 1908 he used his literary writings as a medium for the expression of philosophical ideas. His views on a wide range of philosophical topics are highly original and in many cases surprisingly relevant in the context of contemporary philosophy. Some examples: the relation between perception and action, the anatomy of (sexual) passion, the connection between aesthetic and moral value, the embodiment of cognition, the futility and absurdity of looking for the meaning of life, the thin line between sanity and insanity, and the importance and limitations of scientific reasoning. Contributions are invited on Musil’s ideas in philosophy, especially those which attempt to develop Musil’s often sketchy thoughts into carefully argued and coherent analyses.