"Thinking is a Way of Life": On Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities"

Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities

“Without doubt the greatest writing, ranking with the finest our epoch has to offer.” — Thomas Mann

Ulrich, the protagonist of The Man Without Qualities, is a figure we are all familiar with. A man of means and extraordinary talent living in Vienna on the eve of the First World War, he has already been successful as a soldier, a mathematician and an engineer. Women find him irresistible. Society opens every door. Yet none of it seems like it adds up to anything. He decides to “take a year’s leave from his life” and step back from all the things he could become to figure out if there’s anything he actually wants to be.

But he quickly discovers the problem is bigger than him. All around him sense of direction is dissolving. Something is ending — or has already ended. People still go to the opera, and raise toasts to progress, but a whole way of life is on the verge of collapse, and nobody seems to notice or to know what to do.

Sound familiar? We’re not studying a quirky character from Vienna of 1913, but rather you in 2026.

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