Page 17 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
If Josef K mistakes his Moral Refinement Trial for an Individual’s Rights Trial (T126),29 Job mistakes a Judgment Trial, says Frye, for a Purgatorial one.30 In The Trial, there are two worlds: the public prosecutor’s world of Hasterer’s Court, presumably a legitimate secular and Republican Court, and the Moral Court. Thus, Josef K, disoriented, struggles between the dialectics of enlightenment and of religious ideals. So little he knows about the shabby and mysterious Court, and the Law, that he is astounded by his arrest. Like a Kantian man, he rightly suspects, examines and defies its sinister maneuvers and interference, its domination and legal hounds, its Law and its awful power to turn defendants into crawling puppies. Josef K, an enlightened thinker,31 appears to believe in republican-like citizen rights (T126) that aim at the political principles of non-interference and non-domination.32 In a Republican Court, Josef K is as innocent as Jesus is to Pontius Pilate’s Roman Republicanism. If Josef K is morally flawed, he is not guilty in a criminal way, which is also the posture F•Scholars defend. If Josef K testifies he is innocent, then there is reason to believe his ordeal is one of unjust judgment. In this light, to impute guilt on him without indictment and rights to a just hearing and defense, reinforces the Court’s travesty of Justice. This explains why, when confronted with a Moral Court, K is perplexed at his illicit arrest and the illegitimate proceedings. If he is guilty to the Moral Court, there is reason to believe that Josef K’s trial is one of refinement to probe his selfish heart, as Lasine suggests, to raise him to a loftier degree of virtue by suffering.33 If Josef K fails the trial of moral ascent, he is punished in the same way that “God punishes the guilty in the Hebrew Bible.”34 This suffices to execute him and to justify the Moral Court’s most excellent Justice,35 which generally shares the G•Scholars’ perspective. Just as we can comprehend Josef K’s confusion between a Moral and a Republican Court in his perplexity at the verdict, in his critique of the Moral Court’s corruption, we can also grasp Job’s critique of Yahweh and Job’s confusion that he undergoes a Judgment Trial for a Purgatorial one.36
As enlightened as Job is in his critique of Yahweh, Job’s Judeo-socio-moral-political context is not defined at all by Republican ideals. His twilight differs. He not only ignores two forms of trials exist, but confuses a Judgment Trial, says Frye, for a Purgatorial one.37 A purgation trial refines, purifies and aims at one’s future; a judgment one condemns, accuses and aims at one’s past.38 However, contrary to Frye, Job does comprehend refining and judgment trials exist 3⁄4 God tests man every moment (7:18), and judges his past actions (13:25). This explains why Job misapprehends he undergoes a Judgment trial, and further ignores, as Frye says, that his friends are the ones actually judged.39 They not only slander Yahweh (42:10)40 to defend Yahweh’s theodicy, but also unjustly impose iniquity
29 Josef K says that, “for once, the Court will run into a defendant who stands for his rights” (T126).
30 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 310
31 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 22
32 Pettit, Philip. To Pettit, a republic, as res-publica, seeks the public’s common good, and ensures that it is an empire of virtuous laws and not of men. Pettit
argues that genuine republics aim to secure liberty as both, non-interference and non-domination in order to protect everyone against might and the arbitrary interference of others and the state. The state has the power to interfere only to correct private or corporate imbalances of power, where the strong overtake the weak. In a republic, citizens must not only consent to the Law, but also must contest it if it violates the common good. Pettit, for the most part, follows Locke in that the aim of liberty “is not to restrain but to preserve and enlarge freedom by protecting citizens against violent impositions of their fellow human beings.” Quoted in Pettit, Philip. Republicanism. A Theory of Freedom and Government. See Chapter I, “Republican Freedom, Before Positive and Negative Liberty,” Chapter II, “Liberty as Non-Domination,” and Chapter III, “Non-Domination as a Political Ideal.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 17-109
33 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990), 187
34 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990), 187
35 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990), 187
36 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 310
37 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 310-11 38 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 310-11 39 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 310-11 40 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 311
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