Page 34 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
again and to desire to rouse up Leviathan (3:1-26). Yahweh’s trial does not primordially test Job’s innocence or reaction, but the eternal return to sin. It affirms Satan’s insidious suspicion that no one, absolutely no one 3⁄4 mortal or angel 3⁄4 is righteous or pure before God (4:17). If Job revolts, curses, and yearns to conjure up Leviathan to end all of God’s creation, he is guilty of self-interest. Thus, Job sins in the present to inculpate his past and his future in the temporal eternal present. All of temporal time, thus, collapses into times of guilt for Job. This is Satan’s clever and moral victory over Yahweh: he commands the eternal return to sin in the temporal eternal present and ensures that guilt consciousness propagates by whispering ‘guilt rumors.’ It is not surprising that Kafka, in his devoted inquiry of ‘judgment,’ is equally concerned about gossip and the whispering of rumors.160
G•Scholars argue Josef K is hostile and deferent to the munificent court. Josef K, torn between three antagonisms 3⁄4 Judaism, Christianity and Republicanism, is less morally bound than Job. As half a blameless Job, or half a just man, he is Everyman. As Everyman in a modern world, there are complex ethical and socio-political disparities. Judaism tames Job just as the Court debilitates defendants. And this weakening of the spirit is dehumanizing and intolerable to Josef K. If Job’s Judaism is cosmotheandric, pervading the whole of religious, socio-political and criminal existence, Josef K’s context does not evade them, but links them to his lapsed Christianity and to Enlightenment and Republican values. There 3⁄4 they collide. If Judaism demands atonement and zealous obedience to the Law, Christianity fulfills the Law in Christ and demands love and sin forgiveness, and Republicanism calls for consent and contestation to attain its democratic ideals of non-domination and non-interference of individual rights.161 Thus, Josef K revolts against Judaism’s guilt consciousness, opts for a lapsed Christianity and defends Republican rights (T126). As a Republican, Josef K has the right to be deferent and contest the Moral Court’s interference and domination and to revolt against its inexplicable arrest, persecution and oppression. He has the right to improve things (T56), to defend his rights (T126), the collective rights of defendants (T50-51), and to question the Court (T142) and to exercise consent (T142). Josef K will only accept the Court’s proceedings if he recognizes them (T42). As a Republican, it is also his prerogative to act on his own behalf (T56), and to focus on his own advantage (T125).
In an ideal Republican Court, his citizen rights would prevail. His indictment would be known; his defense, heard; and his trial and ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ verdict, legitimately delivered in a system of check and balances that protects against the tyranny of the majority.
Job’s orthodoxy proves less lenient morally than K’s Republicanism and lapsed Christianity.
In Judaism’s Moral Court, Josef K shall be infinitely guilty. He shall always need to be enlightened this or that way, and be subjected to infinite arbitrary trials, no less frightening than Job’s, to either prove his innocence, if morally perfect, or to undergo a moral metamorphosis, if morally imperfect. He shall know again and again, how futile petitions and confessions are to omnipotent and arbitrary Moral Courts, whether he is blameless like Job, or flawed. If Josef K does not fill it and look inward, it is because there is no place for the Moral Court in Republicanism. It violates autonomous and privacy rights. Thus, defiance is of the essence. If Josef K suspects the Court’s violation of rights, it is his duty to examine its proceedings and its inane Wardens, officials, Huld, defendants, Titorelli and the
160 Anderson, Mark. Reading Kafka. Prague, Politics, and the Fin de Siècle. Wagenbach, Klaus. “Prague at the Turn of the Century.” Ed. Mark Anderson. New York: Schocken Books, 1989. 35
161 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
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