Page 61 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
cannot perceive Milton’s ideals of Natural Law, these, the legitimate foundations of Positive Law. Because Natural Law derives from Christian principles aiming at a Christian Commonwealth,347 says Milton, God’s grace, through Christ, redeems humanity. Natural Law no longer entails Old Testament’s Laws or Yahweh’s Laws. These are superseded by the New Testament’s God. If God perceives himself and the universe, He does not do so from the flawed throne of subjectivity, but of objectivity. In so doing, God returns humanity to its primordial state of natural liberties. In such a state, all men, by common right and dominion over all creatures, are equal coheirs.348
As equal coheirs in a new covenant, their natural liberties institute and preserve a just government founded on the Law of Liberty and Justice. Yet to assure liberty from tyranny, Milton adds, these natural liberties extend beyond Christians to any peoples. Thus endowed with such Natural Law equal-coheir liberties, they constitute a Positive Law binding Kings and Magistrates to the law: “just as the magistrate is set above the people, so the law is set above the magistrate.”349 On these precepts, Milton defends citizens’ rights to revolt, depose and execute King Charles I, which in many ways justifies K’s rebellion against the Court’s surveillance and despotism, and Job’s right to question Yahweh’s immoral order. No citizen endowed with the natural state of liberties, is to be subjected to the tyranny of Kings or Magistrates.350 On these precepts, Milton raged against the perversion of a Positive Law that forgets the people transfer, in trust, their power to Kings and Magistrates for the common good, not common ill of citizens.351 Magistrates, says Milton, take oaths to exercise impartial justice by law, and only on these terms, the people pledge their alliance, and no other. If King or Magistrate is unfaithful to their trust, the people can terminate their covenant or engagement.352 Right that will be ridiculed and trampled on in endless alleys of impotent duress beneath a magistrate’s boundless will that violates Milton’s vehement defense. Might tramples over Right and over Josef K’s individual rights (T126).
Relentless power that makes of a flawed K, another sacrificial scapegoat353 brought to trial by the “inferior drones” Milton denounces. These drones, Milton posits, dare judge and enslave the vision and ideas of great, courageous men by forcing them into silence for having once threatened the status quo.354 The drones silence Josef K and deny K’s autonomous rights. They violate Milton’s Positive Laws and Kant’s categorical imperatives when they hurl impotent defendants to the abyss. If Satan hurls Job to the abyss of misery: death wish, the Judge hurls K to Job’s
appears as a Charioteer on Classical vases. In the Hellenistic period, Nike is used for political reasons on coins and gems.” The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Third Edition. Ed. By Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 1044
347 Please see Romans 8:28-30. Where Christ reverses The Fall of Adam by deliberately emptying himself (kenosis), Christ embodies God’s glory in restoring humanity and recreating Christians anew (Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:4-7). Humanity is reconciled with God and bears Christ’s image, the last Adam (1 Cor 15:42:49).
348 Milton argues the Gospel renews the Original Law before The Fall as if a “second fresh penciling of the eternal law by the spirit in the hearts of believers, a renewing of law originally engraven in Adam’s breast.” See also the Tetrachordon. See also Barker, A. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma. New York, 1942. 114ff. In Grace, William. Milton, Salmasius, and the Natural Law. Journal of the History of Ideas. University of Pennsylvania Press. Vol. 24, No. 3 (Jul. Sept, 1963). 332
349 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure ofKings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 755
350 See also the Tetrachordon. See also Barker, A. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma. New York, 1942. 114ff. In Grace, William. Milton, Salmasius, and the Natural Law. Journal of the History of Ideas. University of Pennsylvania Press. Vol. 24, No. 3 (Jul. Sept, 1963). 332-36
351 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 755-56
352 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure ofKings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 755
353 To Girard, when Job refuses to accept the guilt stigma, he ceases to be a scapegoat. Quoted in Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring, 1990), 192. See also Girard, René. La Route antique des homes pervers. Paris: Grasset, 1985. 56, 165-67. If Girard argues Job is not a scapegoat, Lasine argues K is not a scapegoat because he denies his guilt (Lasine, 192). However, I argue Josef K is a scapegoat, because he begins to doubt his innocence (T213).
354 Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. By Merritt Y. Hughes. Areopagitica. 4th Argument. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 543- 46
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