Page 63 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
Whereas Josef K’s trial began with excess vitality and ended with exhaustion, and capital punishment, Job’s trial moved from resignation to death wishing, and ended in restoration. All things crisscrossed and tragically reversed. K’s quest inwrought with valiant hope, ended in hopelessness, and in an unfulfilled suicide-wish. In the end, K rejected the absurd, and lost his life, and Job accepted the absurd, and gained the pseudo-acquittal K refused. In the end, K had never met his accuser, nor found out the mystery of injustice in the Judge’s plan. In the end, Job learnt the mystery of God’s Divine plan (42:1-6), while K only learnt of the Doorkeeper’s suspicious Law (T213-17).
Whereas Job’s piety showed he is concerned about others in the past, during his trial he is less concerned, and more destructive. He berates the outcasts and will to conjure up Leviathan. Many of his speeches regret more the loss of assets and of prosperity than of his children (29:1-6, 30:14-15, 31:24-25). By contrast, K during his trial moves towards selflessness. He expresses genuine concern for Block, the Merchant, and humanism in general for examining things so acutely. K’s positive moral metamorphosis outshines Job’s negative one. Whatever his predatory ego- centrism and hypocrisies may have been at the outset, they are less so at the end.
Whereas Job looked inward, K examined outward. If Job counts his steps, K examines the Court’s steps. They violate autonomous rights. In this sense, Josef K’s hostility towards the Court is justified on Kant’s imperatives and on Milton’s libertarian principles. If G•Scholars criticize he self-destructs, it is because the Court demands so of him. K’s Court is not impeccable, just and benevolent. The priest-chaplain may seem as concerned as Job’s friends and Elihu, but he is the one that passes the guilt-verdict. Even if his self-proclaimed innocence is self-centred as Dodd says, it is very difficult to accept the priest’s verdict. In light of its brutal capital punishment, the Court is inexorable and a travesty of justice. If Job, a pious-turned-sinner is restored, why is not K restored if a sinner-turned-pious? If Job desires to conjure up Leviathan, and K the forces of order: who is more pious during their trials?
Job’s perceptions of the Court and of God as unjust are not distorted, and neither are K’s. It makes sense to say that K perceives them in the same way: that the Court is unjust, that the Judge is unjust, that whoever accused him, may have just been Satan-like, etc. And just as everyone’s view is distorted in Job’s world, so is everyone’s view distorted in K’s world. It is difficult to deduce from K’s arrest and his flaws that he is actually wicked, which is what Job’s friends affirm of Job. If God punishes Job’s friends for imputing guilt to him, then the same applies to K if the arbitrary Judge had willed it. Even if K were actually guilty when arrested, it cannot be denied that he reforms in a positive, autonomous way. That is one of his victories: his restoration arises out of his autonomous self-improvement. Yet, the hidden Prosecutor or Satan will never tolerate being in the wrong. Satan will test and test until the accused curses and sins at last.
In both trials, there is a tragedy that crucifies all words and murders all light, digging an abysm in philosophy’s lofty heart, making of Job’s goodness, a sinister doubt. But there is yet another grief of an eerier cry, whose ceaseless sorrow congeals idealism’s loftiest skies 3⁄4 it recreates tyranny’s horrors unto every span of time, making darkness equal light. Its vicious aim remains intolerably the same, to accuse and illicitly assault, persecute and execute Josef Ks.
If Guilt Scholars inculpate Josef K and defend the Court’s munificence; Flaw Scholars impute Everyman’s flaws on K and repudiate the Court’s corruption; and Deconstruction Scholars deconstruct metaphysical guilt and the Court.
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