On a general level we can say that most of the figures (in The Man Without Qualities) we encounter try to deal with the contingency they experience by constructing some necessary connections either vertically or horizontally. In talking of vertical connections I have in mind that individual events or rules are tied to one underlying principle. Horizontal connections, by contrast, are a matter of individual events being connected with each other in such a way that their connection now seems necessary. The people in the novel - with the crucial exception of Ulrich - are not aware that reality itself does not come well furnished with necessity, but rather it is they themselves who establish such seemingly necessary connections. These connections are meant to help them orient themselves in a reality that has become excessively complex. They allow their creators to feel embedded in a meaningful order - an order that seems comprehensible and gives its creator the feeling of having a place in a clearly structured world... Ulrich is introduced as the only figure in the novel who is fully aware of the contingency of our actions and conditions, as well as of the possibilities and the problems that it implies for us as agents. Ulrich understands that the contingency of the construction of our world allows us to have the freedom not to be bound by any human situation; but at the same time it also means "never knowing what one wants to be bound by". He even sees the relationship we have to ourselves, to our own characteristics and qualities, as contingent. Accordingly, he understands himself as a man without qualities. While other figures in the novel attempt to find some sufficient reason or necessity for what they do, Ulrich is the only person who is happy to undermine the very principle of sufficient reason according to which the others work - by understanding it as the principle of insufficient reason: it seems this is what we in fact go by in this arbitrary world. Against the reality of the society in which he lives, Ulrich permanently comes up with other possible realities. He doubts the necessity of the whole way in which society is set up - the necessity of individual sub-systems, as, for instance, the conventional system of moral values, as well as the social system as a whole. Understanding himself as not bound, but rather free from the norms of his time and society, he attempts to give himself his own rules - he tries to determine what he is free to do.
Barbara Sattler (St. Andrews University), Contingency and Necessity: Human Agency in Musil's The Man Without Qualities
