Musilesque

comparative more Musilesque · superlative most Musilesque

1. Resembling the lack of inner convictions described by Robert Musil in the title character of his unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities.

   It is a position-taking which must avoid the other extreme: the Musilesque situation, in which man founders on the unlivable ideal of an exact, scientific practice of life, which ideal cannot guide practice (E. Heintel, K.-O. Apel).

   1968, Gerard Radnitzky, Contemporary Schools of Metascience - Volume 1, page 148

   2 more examples

   For one thing, the very fact that Marcel possesses, and unwittingly betrays, an idiosyncratic point of view—the fact that Proust has opted to present him as a decidedly un-Musilesque “man with qualities,” endowing him with a series of propositions and dispositions that map his "world" —tells us something about Prous, confirming that perspective is, so to speak, part of his perspective.

   2004, Joshua Landy, Philosophy As Fiction, page 141

   The world is increasingly becoming a Single Central Europe with its Kafkaesque anonymity, Musilesque human-traits-free individuality, or the divided individual without individuality and indivisibility, Orwellesque Newspeak and total control, if not manufacturing, of history.

   2011, L. Donskis, Modernity in Crisis: A Dialogue on the Culture of Belonging