Kakania und Kultur

Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin. New York: Simon & Schuster, Touchstone Books. 314 pp.

“A place where one would like to spend one’s life, or at least a place where it would be smart to stay, even though one may not feel any particular inclination to be there”— thus was Wittgenstein’s Vienna characterized by his contemporary, Robert Musil. It was the capital of “Kakania”—the name Musil coined for imperial Austria, signifying through word play both the realm’s ambiguous political condition and also “Excrernentia.” “Yes,” wrote Musil, “in spite of much that seems to point the other way, Kakania was perhaps a home f...