Page 39 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Court’svictim.193 TheParable’struthisthatKisfree,saysthepriest.IfKisunabletochange,Ksquandershislife. “He can go wherever he wishes, only the entrance to the Law is denied to him” (T221). If Josef K, the countryman, spends the rest of his life sitting by the door 3⁄4 as some superstitious defendants do, as Job does when in revolt 3⁄4 he is not coerced, but does so out of his own free will (T221). Thus, the Parable teaches K ought to wait patiently. If Marson argues K never asks himself why he cannot enter the Law,194 Robertson argues K believes he has an innate right to it.195 In fact, to enter the Law, Josef K needs not only to morally change, but also realize he has free will to discerngoodfromevil.196 YetJosefKcriticizesthisperspective.“TheprocessofattritionandradicalcritiqueofK’s Parable of the Law” says Dodd, “encourages a secular and political reading of the Court and the trial as social processes, by which a particular ideology is enforced.”197 Indeed, “if these moral and religious laws were [in individual cases only] policed and enforced ‘literally’ like the criminal law, what would occur?”198 Feelings of meaninglessness, inauthenticity and a reification of bad conscience occur.199 One thing is certain to Dodd 3⁄4 the exchange between K and the priest clearly detonates an ideological battle.200 It is precisely this ideological battle between the Court and its Parable of the Law that adumbrates Kafka’s “desperate complication” between God and man.
In the desperate theandric struggle, the priest interferes. There is no genuine pity in the priest, only the importunity of K’s moral subjectivism and relativism, in contrast to the Court’s moral objectivity and absolutism. Indeed, any enlightenment faculties against despotism or Kantian tendencies towards Sapere Aude or Dare to Know201 exercised by K, or precociously by Job, are disprized by the Wardens, the Priest, the Court of Inquiry officials, and K’s network (as to K), and by Yahweh and Job’s friends (as to Job). To Kafka’s fin de siècle and absolutist priest, the Law’s text is unquestionably right, just as it is for Job before and after his rebellion and trial. Earnest Job, like Josef K, defends his case against Yahweh’s metanarrative. Blameless in every way, Job knows he will be vindicated, yet what occurs? He foretells that as soon as God shall say, “Who dares argue with Me?” Job’s mighty courage shall shrink to naught. He will backtrack and repent, submit and “perish in silence” (13:18-19). And that is precisely what occurs in Yahweh’s theophany. Josef K, however, will struggle until the end and refuse to back track. He will argue with the priest- prison-chaplain, and in the end, not desist in his critique. For his defiance, or his self-autonomous dream of rights (T214), or for whatever his inexplicable accusation may have been, Josef K shall be brutally man-slaughtered. If we shall never be enlightened as to the precise reason of K’s murder, not only are we certain of the Court’s evolving despotism, particularly in the novel’s brutal denouement, but we also grasp how dangerous it is to challenge the Court and its priestly hierarchy and authority. In this antagonism, Kafka’s desperate challenge and struggle between God and man mirrors, in a mise en abyme, Job’s and Josef K’s terrifying moral and ideological tension with the tyrannous Court.
193 Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 123. In Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 15
194 Marson, Eric. Kafka’s Trial: The Case Against Josef K. St. Lucia, Queensland: U Of Queensland Press, 1975. 303-04. In Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 15
195 Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 124. In Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 15
196 Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 124. In Scott, Len. Josef K.: Kafka’s Anti-Job. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2010. 15
197 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 45
198 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 21
199 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 48
200 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 41
201 Individual courage to use one’s own independent understanding, to Sapere Aude, is to be released from the opinions or tutelage of others. It encourages
liberty, and breaks despotism’s shackles. Kant. Practical Philosophy. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784). Ed. and Trans. By Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 11-22
—39—