Self-Utopia and the Robber's Ethics

Abstract

Robert Musil's affinity with philosophers of self-culture, such as Emerson or Thoreau, sheds a new light on the very idea of a man without qualities. In fact, “the man of possibility” already appears in Emerson's essays as an emblematic figure of a certain version of moral perfectionism. This article defends the idea that the point of Musil's great novel is the moral constitution of the self. It focuses on one of the less commented-upon utopias: self-utopia, that is, the attempt to change oneself, to move from the real, disappointing self to a better one. The key to self-improvement is to be found in the development of an individualist ethics beyond social moral norms, which might be called the robber's ethics.

Keywords:

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• ethics
• moral perfectionism
• Robert Musil
• utopia

Notes

Cavell's notion of moral perfectionism is to be found in almost all his works. However, he gives a more accurate account of it in two of his books: Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), and more recently, Cavell, Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters on a Register of a Moral Life (Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).

If I shall insist on Emerson's influence, it is not to build an arbitrary link between Musil and Cavell, who discusses his notion of “moral perfectionism” often with respect to Emerson. The point is that Emerson is a major reference in Musil's thought, sometimes explicit, sometimes more implicit[0].

Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. and ed. Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike, New York, Knopf, 1995, I, 61: 266 (there translated as “utopia of himself”). Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, in Gesammelte Werke in neun Bänden, ed. Adolf Frisé (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1978), I, 61: 247. Subsequent references will appear in the text as MWQ and MoE, repectively, with volume and page numbers.

In the third section of The Man without Qualities, the main character named Ulrich says that concerning ethics, he likes robbers, and that he wants his sister Agathe to act like a robber and not like a crook: “Ich liebe die Räuber der Moral, und nicht die Diebe.” MoE II, 958/MWQ II, 1039.

In his diaries, Musil gives a lot of information about his literary ambition, his different projects, and his conception of the novel.

See David Midgley, “Experiments of a Free Spirit: Musil's Explorations of Creative Morality in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften,” in Ecce Opus: Nietzsche-Revisionen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Rüdiger Görner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 111–24.

To read further on the question of the free spirit in Emerson, Nietzsche, and Musil, see my article: Sophie Djigo, “Free Spirits: Idealism and Perfectionism,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, “Moral Perfectionism and Pragmatism” II, no. 2 (2010): 160–72.

The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson, 12 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903–4), vol. 8, 71.

Geoffrey C. Howes, “Emerson's Image in Turn-of-the-Century Austria. The Cases of Kassner, Friedell, and Musil,” in Modern Austrian Literature 22, no. 3–4 (1989): 227–40.

See Hannah Hickmann, “Der junge Musil und Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in Musil-Forum 6 (1980): H.1, 3–13.

See the sketched version of the unfinished novel in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, in Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. Adolf Frisé (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1952), II, 1430: “Selbst ein so gesetzter Mann wie der berühmte alte amerikanische Schriftsteller Ralph Waldo Emerson (…) hat behauptet, es sei ein allgemeines Natur—und Menschengesetz, daß Gleiches von Gleichem angezogen werde.” Bracketed citations in the text indicate a reference to this older edition of Der Mann ohue Eigenschaften.

This quotation appears twice in the novel: MoE II, 3, and MoE II, 10.

See Nachlass NM 7/11/109, 110, 111, and 1/04/014, in Klagenfurter Ausgabe. Kommentierte digitale Edition sämtlicher Werke, Briefe und nachgelassener Schriften. Mit Transkriptionen und Faksimiles aller Handschriften, ed. Walter Fanta, Klaus Amann, and Karl Corino (Klagenfurt: Robert Musil-Institut der Universität Klagenfurt, DVD Version, 2009).

R. W. Emerson, “Circles”, in Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte (New York: Literary Classics of the United States; Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1984), 403.

Ibid., 405.

Musil, Precision and Soul, 62ff. Robert Musil, “Skizze der Erkenntnis des Dichters”, in Gesammelte Werke in neun Bänden, VIII, 1026–27.

See the essay “The German as Symptom,” in Robert Musil, Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses, trans. Burton Pike and David S. Luft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

See the analysis of abandonment by Cavell, “Thinking of Emerson,” in Emerson's Transcendental Etudes, ed. David Justin Hodge (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 18ff. See also Sharon Cameron, Impersonality. Seven Essays (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

For a pragmatist reading of Emerson, see the book by David M. Robinson, Emerson and the Conduct of Life. Pragmatism and Ethical Purpose in the Later Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Commenting on “Fate,” he remarks that “The problem, of course, is to cultivate the state of mind capable of seeing limitation as a possibility, an achievement that required an enormously difficult discipline of the will. The marshalling of that discipline in the face of tragedy and failure is Emerson's motivational task as essayist, a task that ironically transforms ‘Fate’ into a celebration of power” (138).

The Journal and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. William H. Gilman et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960–82), Vol. 8, 182–83. “In town I also talked with Sampson Reed, of Swedenborg and the rest. “It is not so in your experience, but it is so in the other world.” – “Other world?” I reply, “there is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact (…).””

Emerson, Essays and Lectures, 408–09.

Dieter Thomä, “Metaphysik. Bemerkungen zu Nietzsche und Heidegger mit Seitenblicken auf Emerson, Musil und Cavell,” in Heidegger und Nietzsche (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2005), 265–96.

Gesammelte Werke in neun Bänden, II, “Ansätze zu neuer Ästhetik,” 1153: “Wie merkwürdig wird dadurch, daß wir dennoch die Tendenz haben, sie als Bruchstücke einer anderen Totalität zu bewerten, als Elemente eines Erlebens, das sich in einer anderen Dimension erstreckt als das der Erfahrung und ihnen seine Richtung leiht; denn dies setzen alle Versuche voraus, die eine andere Innerlichkeit, eine Welt ohne Worte, eine unbegriffliche Kultur und Seele als erreichbar hinstellen.” And also: “Geist und Erfahrung,” Ibid., 1053: “Eine Frage für sich ist die Intuition. Ich beantrage, alle deutschen Schriftsteller möchten sich durch zwei Jahre dieses Wortes enthalten.”

Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

I am quoting here again from the older edition: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, in Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. Adolf Frisé (Rowohlt Verlag: Hamburg, 1952), [II, 59] 1175.

This definition reinforces the social nature of morality.

Musil also defends a special conception of causality, distinct from that of a linear and unequivocal connection between one identified cause and its effect. In brief, causality is rather thought as multiple intertwined chains of causes, forming a very complex net.

Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1952 edition), 57, 1164.

Musil, Precision and Soul, 187.

While the English translation is “thief,” I prefer “crook,” which is more expressive of the immoral nature of this type of agent, opposing to the ethical position of the robber.

Midgley, “Experiments,” 124.

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 2nd ed., 191.

This is a famous point we can draw from G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976; 1st ed. 1957), section 20, 9: “The occurrence of other answers to the question “Why?” besides ones like “I just did,” is essential to the existence of the concept of an intention or voluntary action.”

The Cavell Reader, ed. Stephen Mulhall (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 198.