ABSTRACT
Two well-known contemporary novelists, Iris Murdoch and Milan Kundera, have, each in a single novel, eloquently expressed the view that “theory” is fundamentally useless in illuminating, let alone overcoming, the quandaries of human life when major decisions have to be made. Both of them essentially identify theory with general statements from which practical prescriptions might be inferred to aid in the resolution of the highly contingent problematic situations in which human beings inescapably find themselves. Lives are permanently changed as a result of chance meetings with particular persons, the arbitrary choice of one route rather than another on a journey, learning through hearsay at just the right moment of residential, educational, or occupational opportunities. Kundera applies an old German saying Einmal ist keinmal , literally “one time is no time,” or “what happens but once might as well not have happened at all” as he renders it, to choices and actions taken under circumstances that will never recur.
