A Critical Approach to homo theoreticus in Victory by Joseph Conrad

In Victory (1915) Conrad portrays Axel Heyst, an ambiguous protagonist, who after his father’s death decides to follow his sceptical philosophy and practises radical detachment. However, an encounter with Lena and the assault of Mr. Jones’s gang put Heyst in a quandary about whether he should reevaluate his assumptions and take action. Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of homo theoreticus, typical of modern subjectivity, who privileges disinterested observation over taking a position and encourages withdrawal into the noetic sphere of one’s thoughts sheds light on Heyst’s preference for reducing his life experience to contemplation and accounts for his self-conceptualization as the observing ego who refuses to act. However, the destabilisation of the dichotomies of the inner and the outer, the objective and the subjective, the intellectual and the sensual invalidates the project of establishing the coherent theoretical self. Unable to sustain his stable identity, Heyst chooses suicide as an extreme form of detachment.