This research project examined the largely neglected connection between Robert Musil’s work and intellectual currents such as astrology, esotericism, and East Asian philosophy in the early twentieth century. The focus was placed on Musil’s opus magnum The Man without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), which can be read not only as a literary reflection of modernity but also as a profound resonance space for cosmological and metaphysical thought. Drawing on Musil’s notebooks, essays, and the poetics of his famous novel, the project traced how motifs from the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching, from astrological classifications (e.g. C.A.Q. Libra’s Astrologie. Ihre Technik und Ethik, 1915), and from the contemporary reception of Hanns Hoerbiger’s Welteislehre (World Ice Theory) entered Musil’s intellectual framework.

The aim of this project was not to propose a simplistic esoteric reading, but to demonstrate Musil’s engagement with these symbolic systems as an ironic yet earnest attempt to negotiate questions of meaning, order, and identity within the tension between rationality and transcendence. It became evident that Musil’s work, especially The Man without Qualities, is far more deeply shaped by these discourses than previously assumed. The contemporary popularity of texts such as the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching, as well as astrological writings like Libra’s Astrologie, reflects a widespread longing for spiritual reorientation in a modernity marked by a profound social crisis. Therefore, Musil’s writing stands as a prime example of this intellectual movement.

Yet Musil does not adopt these concepts uncritically. He integrates them as reflexive thought figures (Denkfiguren) within his complex literary system. The I Ching, for example, appears not as an exotic ornament but as a model for a conjunctive worldview, an ordering principle grounded in the sense of possibility (Moeglichkeitssinn) that resonates with Musil’s essayistic style. At the same time, Musil maintains a critical distance from the fashionable Orientalism of his era. His irony exposes the cultural projections and clichés of Asia while simultaneously transforming them into a poetic resource. Far Eastern ideas are not simply appropriated but reworked and translated into a Western-modern field of possibility.

In conclusion, Musil’s engagement with astrology, esotericism, and Eastern philosophy constitutes an integral dimension of his literary thought. It opens a new reading of The Man without Qualities that intertwines psychological, sociological, and epistemological concerns with cosmological models of order.