Page 30 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Whether he conceals, or confesses his sins, the bureaucratic Court shall not only stagnate his petitions and proceedings, but it will also never grant him a real acquittal. Actual acquittals are never granted, and innocence, never regained. Therefore, Josef K’s deliberation not to fill out his petition is legitimate. It is not that Josef K rationalizes his moral failure,145 but that to him moral failure constitutes not to rationalize. Josef K, an enlightened thinker, rationalizes how futile defense is, and how to be moral or immoral in an arbitrary Court means nothing to the Court. To impute guilt on Josef K for neglecting to examine his life, for concealing his sins, for desisting to redact his petition, is thus, self-defeating.
The self-destruction allegations against Josef K by G•Scholars, mirror the self-entrapment condemnations against Job by his friends. It is to hear “his own counsel ensnares him, shortening his steps” (18:7) and “the wicked cast his own net” (19:6). Therefore, it is their “innocence” delusions that ensnare them (19:5-6; T5). But it is not so. Yahweh condemns Job’s friends for calumniating and imputing guilt on Job (42). Job’s perception that Yahweh is unjust, is correct (41, 42). If Job grasps the right, might not K grasp it, too? If it is a fallacy that Job suffers because he is wicked, might it not be so for K? Might not G•scholars be as deceived as Job’s friends? Might not Josef K be innocent, even if Everyman? In Job, it is Satan that spreads the guilt rumors. In The Trial, it is the Prosecutor that spreads the guilt slander. Both deceive. In Job, it is Yahweh that authorizes Job’s sufferings. In The Trial, presumably it is the Judge. If Yahweh recognizes he is unjust, then might not the Judge recognize it, too? If Job’s trial is unjust, might not K’s be, too? Might not Josef K’s execution demonstrate yet another inexplicable travesty of Justice by the inaccessible High Court and its absent Judge?
Might not these subtleties be lurking in Kafka’s half-lit tale?
The allegations of G•Scholars derive the fallacious and most absurd and tyrannous philosophical conclusion 3⁄4 that if Everyman is tried under the same circumstances as Josef K, the Court has the right to criminalize and execute Everyman in a Moral Court. Such premise must affront our sense of justice, for no genuine divine laws posit a commandment to kill or to harm others, or to inexplicably arrest and execute Everyman. If the primordial Decalogue commandment, “thou shall not kill” (Ex 20:1-13; Deut 5:4-17) is violated by Moses, the Law Giver, as it is violated by The Trial’s Court, it affirms Moses’ and the Court’s arbitrary powers to violate its own Moral Law. If he delivers the Law by noon, he arbitrarily orders the slaying of every Golden-Calf sinner and reveler by eve. And Aaron, his brother and the obedient Prosecutor, heeds it. But it is a violation of the Law, just as Yahweh violates his covenant to protect a blameless Job. Not only sinners are estranged from their own proceedings and blotted out from Yahweh’s book (Ex 32:24-27, 32:33),146 but also the innocent. In Job’s case, it is his presumably innocent children that perish for no just reason despite Job’s devotion to make sacrifices to atone on their behalf just for the possibility they might sin or neglect Yahweh (1:5). It confirms Uncle Karl’s warning that the arbitrary Moral Court crosses off those that lose their trials (T94), and Leni’s words that no one is innocent and that all K can do, is to confess on the first chance Josef K gets (T106-08).
145 Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 103. In Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 18
146 The Yahweh-sponsored battles and deaths are in the millions in the Old and New Testaments. —30—