Editing Robert Musil (section)

== Thought ==
The fundamental problem Musil confronts in his essays and fiction is the crisis of [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] values that engulfed Europe during the early twentieth century.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Understanding Robert Musil|last=Thiher|first=Allen|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|year=2009|pages=155}}</ref> He endorses the Enlightenment project of emancipation, while at the same time examining its shortcomings with a questioning irony.<ref name=":0" /> Musil believed that the crisis required a renewal in social and individual values that, accepting science and reason, could liberate humanity in beneficent ways.<ref name=":0" /> Musil wrote:<blockquote>After the Enlightenment most of us lost courage. A minor failure was enough to turn us away from reason, and we allowed every barren enthusiast to inveigh against the intentions of a [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert|d'Alembert]] or a [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] as mere rationalism. We beat the drums for feeling against intellect and forgot that without intellect ... feeling is as dense as a blockhead (''dick wie ein Mops ist'').<ref>{{Cite book|title=Understanding Robert Musil|last=Thiher|first=Allen|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|year=2009|pages=161}}</ref></blockquote>

He took aim at the ideological chaos and misleading generalizations about culture and society promoted by nationalist reactionaries. Musil wrote a withering critique of [[Oswald Spengler]] entitled "Mind and Experience: a Note for Readers Who Have Escaped the Decline of the West (''Geist und Erfahrung: Anmerkung für Leser, welche dem Untergang des Abendlandes entronnen sind'')", in which he dismantles the latter's misunderstanding of science and misuse of axiomatic thinking, to try to understand human complexity and promote a deterministic philosophy.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Understanding Robert Musil|last=Thiher|first=Allen|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|year=2009|pages=166–169}}</ref>

He deplored the social conditions under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and foresaw its disappearance.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Understanding Robert Musil|last=Thiher|first=Allen|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|year=2009|pages=171–173}}</ref> Surveying the upheavals of the 1910s and 1920s, Musil hoped that Europe could find an internationalist solution to the "dead end of imperial nationalism".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Understanding Robert Musil|last=Thiher|first=Allen|publisher=Univ of South Carolina Press|year=2009|pages=187}}</ref> In 1927, he signed a declaration of support for the [[Austrian Social Democratic Party]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Philip |last2=Bartram |first2=Graham |last3=Tihanov |first3=Galin |title=A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil |date=2007 |publisher=Camden House |page=428}}</ref>

Musil was a staunch [[individualist]] who opposed the authoritarianism of both right and left. A recurring theme in his speeches and essays through the 1930s is the defense of the autonomy of the individual against the authoritarian and collectivist ideas then prevailing in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Russia.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Philip |last2=Bartram |first2=Graham |last3=Tihanov |first3=Galin |title=A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil |date=2007 |publisher=Camden House |pages=69–70}}</ref> He participated in the anti-fascist International Writers' Congress for the Defense of Culture in 1935 in which he spoke in favor of artistic independence against the claims of the state, class, nation, and religion.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Philip |last2=Bartram |first2=Graham |last3=Tihanov |first3=Galin |title=A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil |date=2007 |publisher=Camden House |page=78}}</ref>