As Robert Musil once observed, an essay is an "attempt," but it is an attempt that is qualified and determined. For Musil, the essay eschews conventional notions of "true" and "false," "wise" and "unwise," but it is "nevertheless subject to laws that are no less strict than they appear to be delicate and ineffable" {Musil, 1953/1995, p. 301}. The essay, still according to Musil, therefore lingers somewhere "between amor intellectualis and poetry.
( Michael Hviid Jacobsen )
[ The Social Thought of Erving ]
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