This essay was written in 1934: Broch is in Austria and Germany, the world is falling apart around him, and he places the blame on positivism? (He means it in the secularist sense, and he reserves special praise for the “unique sensitivity” of the Catholic Church.) I’m fond of Broch’s The Death of Virgil, but when it comes to ideas, his moral conservatism is limp and useless next to the work of Musil and Cassirer.
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Articles Elsewhere:
- The Stupidity of Computers
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"Those who live in the present but who harbor no doubts about the structure of authority, about the extreme dangers of our society, including the estrangement of man and nature, those whose anger does not drive them to delve into the essentials, and those whose approach to their art raises no questions, all of these must renounce their status as artists."
—Masayuki Takayanagi
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