Robert Musil and Hermann Broch are frequently compared and contrasted in studies of the Viennese modernist literary canon. Both authors style themselves as poetic voices speaking in the medium of a consciously precise scientific voice, and both explore a sense of fatal entwinement of the rational and the non-rational in European civilization on the eve of the First World War. Yet where Broch remains in large part the seeker of ethical repair and reconstruction in his writing, Musil is the more avowedly sceptical and agnostic voice. This contribution examines the extent to which each writer bequeaths a distinctive vision of the ‘cultural crises’ of Western modernity, not only in this theme’s familiar bearing on the period known as ‘high’ or ‘classical modernity’ but also specifically in its significance for our current societal horizon of so-called ‘late’, ‘liquid’ or ‘second’ modernity. The argument presented is that while Musil appears to offer the more percipient account, making this determination requires probing for ways in which Broch’s motifs might be thought to challenge Musil’s intervention in certain regards or to hint at some lacunae in it.