Abstract

Since his death in 1942, Robert Musil has come to be recognized as one of the most significant novelists of this century. His masterpiece, the monumental and unfinished Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, presents in its merciless mirror not only the decaying culture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the outbreak of the First World War, but also our own spiritual culture, perilously close to a far more complete destruction. One can only be grateful for this translation of the dissertation which the young Musil, having left engineering for philosophy, wrote in Berlin, where he had become a student of the celebrated Carl Stumpf. A warning, however, is in order. Those expecting connections between the mature work of the novelist and this careful examination of the theories of Ernst Mach may well be disappointed. This is the rather academic work of a gifted, sober, and disciplined young philosopher, who is careful not to exceed the limits that he has set himself in this study: to provide an immanent critique of Mach's theories.