Because Weiss is not being pretentious. He is being honest. He is showing you the raw, unfiltered slurry of consciousness before it gets edited into the clean, false architecture of a "finished" argument. He is saying: This is what thinking actually looks like. For the first 3,200 pages, The Unfinished is a fireworks display of erudition—Kant, the Icelandic sagas, the chemistry of rust, the mating habits of the garden snail. It is dazzling and exhausting.
Here is a sample of the table of contents from Volume III (the "middle" volume, though there is no beginning or end): Chapter 12: On the Use of Blue Ink in Afternoon Hours (Summer) Sub-chapter 12a: The Blue Ink Itself, Considered as a Philosophical Problem Sub-chapter 12b: Why I Did Not Write Sub-chapter 12a Interlude: A List of 47 Books I Did Not Finish Reading in 1974 Footnote to the Interlude: The Smell of the 19th Book on That List (a Library in Vienna) It is maddening. It is hilarious. And it is devastating. longest essay in the world
His doctoral thesis ran to 2,200 pages. His publisher threatened to sue. His first book, Toward a Hermeneutics of Hesitation , was meant to be a slim 200-page volume. He delivered 1,400 pages of "preliminary notes." He famously said, "A conclusion is a violence I refuse to commit against the possible." Because Weiss is not being pretentious
But I have read enough to know that The Unfinished is the truest essay ever written. Because an essay is not a conclusion. The word "essay" comes from the French essayer —to try, to attempt. He is saying: This is what thinking actually looks like
The literary executors did neither. They donated it to the archive. And for forty years, almost no one has read it. A handful of doctoral students have made the pilgrimage to Marbach. Most give up after Volume I. I have not read the whole thing. I am not sure anyone has. The archivist at Marbach told me that the only person who might have read it cover to cover was Weiss himself, and even he probably skipped around.
And in that impossible, bloated, beautiful failure, he succeeded.
We live in the age of the snackable listicle. The 280-character hot take. The TikTok summary of a 500-page book.