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defy. Job, the first de-constructor of theodicy82 “the just prosper, the wicked suffer,”83 detests the injustice of his punishmentandtheaccuse-guiltgame.BecauseJobisdispossessed,hesuffersandiswicked.84 JosefKtoorefutesthe injustice of his sufferings and the accuse-guilt game. Because Josef K is arrested, he suffers and is guilty. It is just as simple, illogical and chilling for Job and Josef K, as for D•Scholars.
D•Scholars argue The Trial, an unresolved paradox, radically criticizes Guilt and the Court as a fundamental social institution.85 Attuned D•readers will empathize with Robertson and Sheppard’s critique against transcendence. The desire for the transcendent in Kafka is a “dangerous, Faustian temptation.”86 Similarly, Deleuze and Guattari contend that The Trial is ‘the dismantling of all transcendental justifications,’87 and “that Kafka is engaged in a radical questioning of religious and moral systems.”88 Josef K’s guilt is, indubitably, the ineradicable guilt of original sin.89 In The Trial, there is not one single actual acquittal; Josef K eats an apple for breakfast when arrested recalling Eden’s original sin;90 and the priest delivers an irrefutable verdict, “guilt is assumed proved” (T213). The priest’s response to Josef K’s moral query, “How can any one in general be guilty?” 3⁄4 is one of condemnation, authority and power, not of justice.91 It recalls Yahweh’s intimidating speeches in the Book of Job (37-41).
As soon as Josef K posits the question whether anyone can be guilty, we recall Satan’s insidious accusation against Job 3⁄4 “is it for nothing that Job has been fearing God?” (1:10), and Satan’s whispers to Eliphaz, “Can anyone be righteous or pure before God?” (3:17, 15:15-16, 25:4-6). Humanity, condemned to habitual guilt, is besieged in Judaism’s original sin, engendering Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence of the same.92 Both Courts are equally attracted by Sin (8:9-10) and Guilt (T9). If the Book of Job’s Moral Court is drawn to sin, The Trial’s Court “assumes that the
82 This reflects the Book of Job’s crucial argument challenging theodicy. Yahweh destroys both the innocent and guilty, and mocking the innocent, bestows control of the world to the wicked (9: 22-24). Job also alludes to the prosperity of the wicked (21:7-18), to their exemption from catastrophe, and to their peaceful deaths (21:22-33). Even the notion that Yahweh punishes the offspring of the wicked is unfounded to him (21:19-21).
83 In Job’s world, the Lord of History (12:9-10) “and his people were covenant partners owing each other a mutual loyalty.” Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 23 Consequently, humans were to ‘fear God and turn away from evil’ (Job 1:1) while God was to destroy the wicked and succour the righteous oppressed. See Descamps, A. “Justice et Justification,” in DBS IV 1421ff. In Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 23. This notion led to the illusion and fallacy of equating justice with prosperity. See MacKenzie, R.A.F. Job in JBC, 512. In Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 23. It also led to the notion of equating rewards and punishments with merit and sin. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 23
84 Job’s friends’ make many allegations. They affirm divine justice, or the notion that God rewards the just and punishes the wicked (Eliphaz [4:7-11], Bildad [8:9-20]). They affirm that no man is just, innocent, or pure before God (Eliphaz [15:14-16]), that tradition shows the wicked suffer punishment (Eliphaz [15:17- 35], Bildad [8:9-20; 18:5-21], Zophar [11:20; 27:13; 24:21-24, 18-20; 27:14-15]), and that wealth does not prevent the wicked from punishment [25:1; 27:7-10, 16- 23]. They also affirm that God’s power and wisdom is beyond human comprehension (Zophar [11:6-12]), and that Job is too presumptuous in boasting his wisdom and innocence, and too immoderate in his impious speech (Eliphaz [15:1-6; 15:7-8; 15:9-10], Zophar [11:1-5; 20:5-20]). Moreover, they accuse Job of oppressing the poor, widow and orphan [22:5-20]. In response to Job’s argument that the just suffer and the wicked prosper, they posit that the triumph of the wicked is temporary [20:4-29]. Extracted from The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “Book of Job.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume III. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 918-20
85 Please see Beicken 283ff. Beicken, P.U. Franz Kafka. Eine kritische Einfuhrung in die Forschung, Frankfurt/M, 1974. Please see especially Kraft, Herbert. Mondheimat – Kafka. Pfullingen, 1983. 16-33, 141-53. Both texts quoted in Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 33. “The third position is to see the thematic structure of the novel as an unresolvable paradox, at the centre of which is a questioning...of the notion of guilt...Those who, like Beicken, read Der Proceß in terms of a ‘blanke, entartete Machtkampf kontrarer Positionen’ also tend to see the novel as a radical critique of the Court as a fundamentally social institution.” 33. Translation of ‘blanke, entartete Machtkampf kontrarer Positionen’ is ‘a degenerate power struggle of contrarian Positions.’ Trans. By Babylon German to English translation dictionary. See http://translation.babylon.com/german/to-english/
86 Robertson, Ritchie. “Kafka as Anti-Christian.” In Rolleston, James. A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka. New York: Camden House, 2002. 103
87 Deleuze and Guattari. Kafka Toward a Minor Literature. Trans. By Dana Polan. Minneapolis: Minessota Press, 1986. 51
88 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 45. Footnote 42 refers to Deleuze and Guattari’s
work: Kafka. Fur eine kleine Literatur. Frankfurt, Munich, 1976. 71,or Kafka Toward a Minor Literature. Trans. By Dana Polan. Minneapolis: Minessota Press, 1986. 51
89 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 35
90 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 34
91 When Josef K asks, “How can anyone in general be guilty?” since “we are all human after all,” the priest retorts, “that is how the guilty speak” (T213).
92 Nietzsche posits that in a world of indestructible and finite atoms, their infinite possible combinations in the eternity of time results in an infinite number
of universes with an infinite number of identical moments, or an infinite recurrence (Wiederkehr) of identical cases. Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra. 57. The Convalescent. Trans. Thomas Common. Cumberland: Wordsworth Classics, 1997. 214
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