Abstract

This essay aims to investigate the paradoxical architecture of ideal structures in the thought of Robert Musil and Nicolai Hartmann. In opposition to the primacy of the concept of function established by Ernst Mach and the Neo-Kantian school, it is emphasized how Musil and Hartmann shared the need to reintroduce the concept of causality into their epistemological reflection. In this regard, the modal declination of the concept of causality emerges. Following Musil, causality implies the symmetrical opening of a set of equiprobable cases. According to Hartmann, the investigation of causality must justify the univocal and necessary correlation between cause and its singular effect. The paradoxical character of ideal structures thus emerges in the context of a reflection regarding the concept of possibility, which in Musil is declined through the use of statistical method, whereas according to Hartmann it takes on the sense of irrevocable determinism.