WITH HOST

Genese Grill

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This session will explore the philosophical ideas of the Austrian novelist, Robert Musil (1880-1942), author of The Man Without Qualities, The Confusions of Young Törleß, and many short stories, plays, and essays. Musil studied engineering, physics, psychology, mathematics, and the science of sense perception, but chose to become a creative writer because he believed that Art was the best realm within which to explore the overlapping realms of aesthetics and ethics, subjectivity and objectivity, probability and possibility, alternate perceptions of reality and "normal" consciousness. He saw modern human beings as lonely minds floating, each of us, on our own plank in the wide sea; he wanted to discover the "Right Life," to find "another human being," and new ways to communicate, but was not satisfied with simple, comforting illusions.