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Transcript

Ulrich, the protagonist of Robert Musil’s unfinished and perhaps unfinishable novel, The Man Without Qualities (1930-1944), is a philosopher in denial. In the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Musil’s hero, torn between various love affairs, rages against the limits of philosophy and the futility of thought. “Philosophers are violent and aggressive persons,” he despairs, “who, having no army at their disposal, bring the world into subjection to themselves by means of locking it up in a system.”    

And so it is with some relief that I announce that a true philosopher by both vocation and avocation —the singular Agnes Callard— will be defending her profession on this episode of the Hinternet Symposium, where she and Justin Smith-Ruiu discuss one of the great works of modernist literature. For both Justin and Agnes, The Man Without Qualities is a novel heavy with nostalgia. Both came across Robert Musil while learning German as graduate students, and both retain a fondness for his tortured protagonist’s esoteric displays of anti-philosophy.

Give it a listen! If you enjoy it, please do subscribe below — this is just the beginning of The Hinternet’s podcast escapade. We hope you’ll join us for it.

OWJ
Managing Editor, The Hinternet

Some Ridiculous AI-generated Sound Bites:

  • “I read him early in grad school.”

  • “Ulrich is not a philosopher.”

  • “The world is not fixed.”

And AI’s attempt at dividing Agnes and Justin’s conversation, which in fact forms a continuum, into discrete units:

00:00 Introduction to Musil and the Conversation
03:46 Exploring The Man Without Qualities
08:54 Ulrich’s Philosophical Dilemma
14:16 The Search for Identity and Freedom
17:02 Historical Context and Decadence
20:47 Political Satire and the Absurd
27:12 The Nature of Autonomy
29:11 The Role of Moosbrugger
35:01 Musil’s Intellectual Aesthetic
40:06 Navigating Philosophical Conversations
43:01 The Role of Fiction in Philosophy
45:51 Exploring the Crisis of Intellect
48:46 The Nature of Love and Connection
53:34 The Soul and Its Absence
58:17 Cultural Commentary and Intellectual Discourse