Page 51 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

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member or sovereign.”284 Josef K’s defiance against mass deception and the ‘prison of custom,’ Milton, too, deplores,285 empowers him.
To advocate autonomous rights, to examine justice in a system of universal lies, shares Kant and Milton’s spirits. Josef K, in the spirit of Kant, obeys his own categorical imperative. As a rational being and “free with respect to all laws of nature,” he fearlessly dares to know,286 and examines all Courtly affairs in order to “obey only those [universal principles]whichhehimselfgives.”287 Thus,theproceedingsarisingoutofaCourtthatviolatesrights,aresenseless and unacceptable unless legitimate in themselves (T213). In Josef K’s self-legislation, K’s action, an end in-itself disregards consequences, be they reward or punishment (T94). Thus, he abides by the one imperative that is not grounded on any other aim, but objectively ‘in itself’ 3⁄4 the categorical imperative.288
Idealist Josef K not only abides by the Kantian categorical imperative, but also by Milton’s Christianity. It possesses the enlightenment airs of Kant’s Sapere Aude and his categorical imperative. Milton’s Christianity, never static, evolves hermeneutically and avoids being imprisoned in custom.289 And if Kant astonishingly claims that God and man “can share membership in a single moral community, only if they [we] equally legislate the law they [we] are to obey,”290 Milton believes men are equal coheirs in a new covenant legislated by men in a single moral community. As equal coheirs in legislation, natural liberties seek to institute and preserve a just government founded on the Law of Liberty and Justice that extend beyond Christians to any peoples.291 Natural liberties constitute a Positive Law where citizens legislate laws to bind Kings and Magistrates to the law: “just as the magistrate is set above the people, so the law is set above the magistrate.”292 If Kant’s objective moral truths do not unify God and humans in a moral community, but the ability to legislate and abide by moral law,293 Milton binds God and humans in a moral community by the ability to legislate and abide by God’s Law. What is most important to derive from these two arguments is that Kant and Milton, by different means, insist that the duty of humanity is to preserve liberty against any form of oppression, and that solidarity is needed to ascertain a moral community where Everyman is dutifully devoted to preserving liberty, without or with God. In this sense, Josef K, as Everyman, follows Kant and Milton’s ideologies. Josef K knows God is absent, but he yearns for the Judge (T231). If K laments the lack of solidarity of defendants to defend their liberties and rights (T175), he shows a longing for Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, where men can freely legislate their liberty just as Jesus legislated a New Way of Liberty. Jesus was very much himself a legislator of a Kingdom of Ends. If Jesus legislates love and forgiveness of sins and promulgates the liberties of innocence and
284 Kant. GroundworkfortheMetaphysicsofMorals.Trans.ByMaryGregor. UK:CambridgeUniversityPress,1998.434
285 Milton agrees with Plato. He argues that custom is never allied to reason, but to license, the passions and to indulgence. See Plato’s Republic VIII, 582c. To Milton, “untrained minds are, therefore, naturally vicious, permitting wretched rulers. When human beings are irrational, they can neither discern good from evil, nor a good King from a tyrant King and justice flees away; it becomes perverted. Thus, the rule of law becomes a tyranny that serves the master, and not the people or commonwealth. Rather than freeing and elevating minds to greater deeds and freedom, it enslaves them and reduces them to servility and fear, and dissent and civil war. Moreover, when the appetites govern, the desire for power overwhelms corroding virtue, and inviting disorder and chaos to reign. In this state, humans incapable of self-governance are incapacitated to govern a nation.” Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 754-58
286 This refers to Kant’s Enlightenment principle, “Sapere Aude” promulgated to free mankind from the chains of custom and of ignorance. 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
287 Kant. GroundworkfortheMetaphysicsofMorals.Trans.ByMaryGregor. UK:CambridgeUniversityPress,1998.435
288 Kant. GroundworkfortheMetaphysicsofMorals.Trans.ByMaryGregor. UK:CambridgeUniversityPress,1998.416
289 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. Areopagitica. 4th Argument. The Harm Licensing can cause. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1957.
290 Schneewind, J.B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 512-13
291 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure ofKings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957.
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292 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure ofKings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957.
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293 Schneewind, J.B. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 512-13
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