Page 35 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Priest with the same rigor Job examines divine ill will and injustice. Claims that Josef K deserves his punishment because he remains an egotist predator, or a nihilist until the end of his trial cannot be asserted in any definitive way. “Where his actions seemed tainted by narrow self-interest,” later they are less so,162 and in time, “K becomes a victim rather than a predator.”163
G•Scholars, like Job’s friends, fail to see that Josef K’s and Job’s hostility is a reaction to the tyranny of the Court’s arbitrary punishment. Confounded and coerced by catastrophe and circumstance, as rational beings, they must examine the nature of their trials and revolt against injustice by defending innocence (Job) and rights (K). In their overwhelming trials, they must stand like Lupins of the Lupin Fields, and not wilt or give in. When Job and Josef K insolently rebel against the Judge and Yahweh, it is a moral duty to refute they err (T213, 231; 19:4). Their Judges are unjust, and their innocence impinges on effrontery and rejecting the accusations.
Just as Josef K pronounces that the Court is corrupt and to blame (T231), Job retorts that Yahweh is at fault (19:5-6). It is Yahweh that wrongs him, subverts his cause, and casts toils around him (19:5-6). Just as K is guilty only if he recognizes the charges (T40), Job is innocent if he rejects the charges (19:5). Even if K were guilty without ill intent, we might hear Job’s refutation against sin in K’s heart. Just as Job argues, “Even if it be true that I have erred, the error remains with me” (19:5), Josef K’s flaws are his when he asserts his autonomous rights (T126). Just as Job reproaches Yahweh, “If I have sinned; how have I harmed You, O Guardian of man? (7:20), Josef K censures the Judge in the priest, “how can anyone in general be guilty?” (T213). As a Republican, if K errs, the error remains with him. As such, his error does interfere with the State (if a political Court) or with the Court (if a Religious one), although to the omniscient and omnipresent Moral Court, it does. Josef K may be, too, crushed for a trifle as Job, too, is ruined for one (9:17-18). Whatever the reasons might be, they remain ambiguous. Thus, K tells Fräulein, “It may be that the Commission of Inquiry realized I am guiltless, or at least not quite as guilty as they thought” (T29). The possibility shall always exist that the Judge actually put Josef K in the wrong.
Thus, indignant against the Court’s injustice, Job and Josef K are unwilling to bend their wills. They know the justifications of their adversaries deceive. Of his friends’ maxims, Job rages they are “maxims of ashes” and “rejoinders of clay!”164 (13:12). Of the Parable of the Law, Josef K erupts, “it is a system of universal lies” (T223). Thus, to turn to the Law and to confess because Leni or others insist (T106-08, 223) 3⁄4 repels. On these premises, neither Job’s friends, K’s network, nor G•Scholars have the right to interfere or condemn Job (19:4) and Josef K (T38) or unite in reproach with Aeschylus and exclaim, “Bend your will, perverse fool, Oh bend your will at last to wisdom in face of your present sufferings!”165 To resist in revolt, is to negate the Court’s arbitrary might and its illegitimate interference, and domination of defendants, officers, lawyers and priests.
Precocious Job and enlightened Josef K, in their autonomous defense of rights and non-interference, partake in Republican and Christian ideals. If Josef K’s defiant Republicanism resonates with moderns, Job’s Republican spirit, demanding non-interference and non-domination in his private affairs, is precocious for his times. Josef K, an
162 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38-9
163 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 38-9
164 Job’s friends advise him to turn to God’s power and justice, which will restore him to a richer and fuller life (Eliphaz [5:8-7; 22:21-30], Bildad [8:1-8; 8:21-
211]), Zophar [11:13-19]), just as K’s acquaintances and Leni counsel him to turn to the law and confess (T106). As 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. 918-920
165 Aeschylus’ maxim expresses the relationship between suffering and learning, as Hermes expresses it to Prometheus. (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 1000- 1001). Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Trans. By Herbert Weir Smyth. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 145 & 146. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926.
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