And now you just run your mind over the sort of man he is. He always knows what
to do. He can gaze into a woman's eyes. He can exercise his intelligence
efficiently on any given problem at any given moment. He can box. He is
talented, strong-willed, unprejudiced, he has courage, and he has endurance, he
can go at things with a dash and he can be cool and cautious - I have no
intentions on examining all this in detail, let him have all these qualities!
For in the end he hasn't got them at all! They have made him what he is, they
have set his course for him, and yet they don't belong to him. When he is angry,
something in him laughs. When he is sad, he is up to something. When he is moved
by something, he will reject it. Every bad action will seem good to him in some
connection or other. And it will always be only a possible context that will
decide what he thinks of a thing. Nothing is stable for him. Everything is
fluctuating, part of a whole, among innumerable wholes that presumably are part
of a super-whole, which, however, he doesn't know the slightest thing about. So
every one of his answers is a part-anwer, every one of his feelings, only a
point of view, and whatever a thing is, it doesn't matter to him what it is,
it's only some accompanying "way in which it is," some addition or other that
matters to him.
I don't know whether I make myself quite clear to you?
Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities
Written on January 19, 2025 by Emilian Kasemi.
2 min read