The Law in Kafka's Work
Dra. Susanne Marie Weber 1 - Philipps-Universität Marburg
Institut fuer Erziehungswissenschaft
Kafka's legal thinking and its effect.
It hard to judge the philosophy of law ostensibly someone who did not try to philosophize about it. The data obtained are the result of a goal-oriented interpretation, and if you have to do is critical to the interpretation, for which the interpreter lacks perspective. Nor is the general metaphysical system lends itself easily to Kafka criticism, as all metaphysics made from the individual, by a particular subjective view and retains a valid unassailable, impossible to question question unless the individual himself. Kafka could be criticized from the standpoint of what he wanted to do, ie, from the literary point of view, but this is not the appropriate place that is neither an easy task. Suffice to note that Kafka technique combines simplicity with rigor, and his style is so original and peculiar that any assessment is hampered by the lack of references. Kafka's work appears as a block to which it is adhering or repudiate it, over in the mind of each and the inclination itself on aseptic arguments (if such arguments exist.)
must not forget that, in effect, is a literary work. As such, its value is given by its artistic merit as a building, and this will be greater the more intense is his assault on the sensibilities of the reader. Here we try to get philosophical and legal findings, and with this view, we must note that it is not possible to claim Kafkaesque accuracy to the text empirical claim to be scientific work (Kafka was not a naturalistic writer, thankfully). The trace table Kafka may seem from a scientific standpoint disproportionate or excessive, not so much by the tone of his speech (provided content) and the realities reflected. About it say that we must not forget the eminently aesthetic purpose of a literary work, for things to take its radical is a legitimate action, in addition, as the transcript of the reality around him is the work of Kafka (a non-literal transcript or servile because his novels are not realistic, in the most vulgar sense of the term), its scope is more ambitious than the strictly legal. But these caveats made, can not hide the whole work of Kafka seems to suggest the dramatic question: is it not all, in truth, thus thoroughly terrible? As uncertainty moves to reflection, the law could also apply this question.
We have previously described the likely impact that the law and experience it in the literature of Kafka, and the limited scope to be given to the symbols related to the legal that are in it. Then we establish the sense that they can take the conclusions of this study: the hypothesis, not at all improbable, not at all safe either. Combining this rule of action with those imposed by the literary character of the work here addressed, it seems permissible to classify records and more useful results of the analysis in two key areas, and in the philosophical and legal grounds: the axiological and the critic. Such, in our opinion, the two most significant wealth of Kafka's work for the purpose here sought. Briefly, I shall describe below the main axes in both fields we deduce from the foregoing.
A) axiological perspective.
Here we see a clear ambivalence, though unbalanced toward one of the values \u200b\u200bat stake. There is no doubt that concern leans Kafkaesque legal certainty value. From multiple approaches. On the one hand, the constant reference to the unknown law, secret, is a complaint not less continuously subject to uncertainty, not knowing what course to pursue for, in some cases, access to what he believes to be given, and others, free of charges for which have done nothing feels emergence. The law has to be true, as deemed Kafkaesque characters and their adventures reveal the dire consequences of an order in which that certainty is denied, under the mystery masked guard unaccountable organizations. Another prominent manifestation of this aspiration axiological is represented by the explicit solution offered us in on the issue of laws and suggests Dr. Huld in the process: the resignation, subject to adjustment of the iniquitous order to cling to what it can presented as its only positive content: the certainty of domination. It is the only certainty is clearly an outrage, but as a certainty is a good in itself, a reference to which we must cling desperately. This view of legal certainty might interpretations lead to totalitarianism, but in addition to unpresentable would be very disrespectful to the ideals that Kafka always sign proclaimed, once again you have to limit rather than a proposition to be taken, it is a surrender imposed by the disproportion of combat. Kafka is a writer essentially pessimistic, for the salvation or liberation are just an illusion and therefore can not be pursued. It is a vocation, that of subject, but a lesser evil of evils immense. And there is something that can give us pause about the end of Kafka's attitude, although this possibility and disappointment made rational choice: Josef K. and K. die, bent on losing war. May Kafka criticized thinking that does not provide alternatives (perhaps this is its greatest failure, but should keep in mind that we're doing playing out of his depth, that literature has no duty to resolve anything), but certainly that submission to injustice and the bet is unique. What happens is that the commitment to persevere takes no more than destruction. Kafka warns about it, no cheating, and ultimately destroyed, moved by an impulse which he has characterized as unwise but no longer follows. There seems no means set despise K. as conformist.
This concern for safety has a history apart from his personal experience (it is worth recalling the suffering of the arbitrary power of the father, or his professional activity was developed in the area of \u200b\u200bworkers' compensation insurance), in thinkers such as Kierkegaard, whose School of Christianity, we read: "He led the established order, adhered to the established order and you will measure. (...) The established order is rational, happy if you abide by the terms of relativity to you are assigned ... " On this fragment, Fassa Guido said: "The status quo provides, in short (...) that good you want to achieve with the law and lawyers called certainty ... "Later the Italian teacher makes a statement that it applies to Kafka:" In the same way that, given the absolute identification between the human and by Hegel, Marx responded by reducing reality only human, Kierkegaard and makes attributing value only to the Absolute, the divine. "Even in Kafka the individual succumbs to the Absolute, but this is such a spirit hostile to the destination than Kierkegaard, which gives opportunities criticisms are listed below and lacks the Danish philosopher (see Fear and Trembling the eulogy of Abraham: "... knew that the sacrifice (of Isaac) was more difficult than he could ask, but I also knew that no sacrifice too hard when it is God who calls, and raised the knife. ") Also of interest is the observation made on Dostoevsky Fassa, some pages later in his "History of Philosophy of Law", summing up a famous passage in The Brothers Karamazov: "... Christ, whom the Grand Inquisitor, ie the Church, and organized society long before they criticize it for having given men's freedom, a gift that men do not want, because men do not want freedom but security, even at the cost of being slaves, and the nature of men claim authority. " It will be recalled, Kafka read widely and with admiration for Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard.
The other value that appears in the work of Kafka, with a more diffuse reflection, given the strong regret about their absence in organizations that portrays the justice value (which might include the values, dignity and freedom). It is an ideal justice, sought to despair, which is symbolized in limiting the blame to that of which the subject feels responsible, in granting to it than you think you deserve. Justice would be like the fit between the individual ethical conscience and the objective order external in Kafka's work as systematically ignores that awareness. Sometimes shyly, sometimes with anger and harshness ("one executioner could replace all the court") Kafka claims that value whose realization seems unusually unthinkable. Again, Kafka's pessimism is exhaustive.
B) Critical perspective.
Perhaps this is where Kafka reflection, read in conjunction with the law, is revealed as a more efficient and more effective. And content axiological involves a complaint of forceful nasty as significant as the systems that we look, what not to seclude a priori in the category of hyperbole unlikely and therefore harmless. Acceptable is that, as a literary work, sometimes overflowing reality clearly, but this is true in an external level, ceases to be a Therefore if we consider the deeper meaning of things. One of the greatest achievements of Kafka is exposing the horror of the everyday, to approve or disapprove it without being moved often when we should drive us to shake. Purely external differences must not prevent us to appreciate the shrewdness of his wake-up call about false habits mentally they are usually assumed. Perhaps our reluctance to admit that everything is so absurd as Kafka says is only the most perfect fruit of these false habits. Hence the critical perspective.
seems debatable that the deficiencies reported by Kafka, to refer them as we are doing to the law and its current reality, which are so absolutely as he made. A conservative estimate would require balance iron. But here we want to do any appraisal or reckless or restrained. The extent to which the criticism is valid is a matter on which it is moving, as their own criteria, one to the other end of the range of possible positions. With the intensity you want, then, and recapping some of the elements discussed in these pages, the criticism of Kafka reveals shortcomings among which are:
- Law as unrelated to the subject order insensitive to them. At a time when all political constitutions open with the inflamed proclaims that "the law is an expression of sovereignty", "sovereignty resides in the people" or "justice emanates from the people," perhaps we should still stand a minute to ponder whether the court or the castle, or the law with his porter, or nobility is itself the law, or not more than fabrications contrived by a Czech weak crushed by a complex of inferiority to his father.
- Law as a tool handled only by initiates unknown inaccessible through incomprehensibly complex procedures, to the puzzled looks of the individual who wants to know where they stand and did not find out ever. Can you laugh at this picture who live in a country with more than one hundred types of civil cases, who attend the frequent confusion with the technicality of those affected by a judicial decision that has always translate an expert?
- The distortion introduced into the law by the administrative structures set up for him and for their application, they just taking over the rule and replacing it by their internal operating rules of bureaucratic praeter legem in the best case, if this state of things before we can say that there is a prior lex different than that resulting from its application by those bodies that are entrusted with their care. When can threaten, for example, the delay in the conduct of an appeal to force a transaction that the law would refuse, do not arise a parallel law for the simple fact of the structures created for the alleged objective law effective?
- Gaps in the law, anomie behind the system is to perfect, and that only shows itself in its role of empire on the helpless individual.
- The law as an imposition of power, regardless of principles of justice, on which this power does not give explanations. At this point, Kafka criticism, product of his time, analyzed from the perspective of current relevance is certainly outdated important detail: the current legal system "care more about their image," not used, with exceptions that correspond to stages of obvious uncivilization, an brutality as stark as the court that ordered the execution of Josef K. But, and this is of course an opinion, law is the ultimate strength, and strength, just as for consistency and the laws of physics, only arises from the force. Law is not always hard, but must be able to be law. Then indispensable for a functioning legal system as such is to have power to back it up. Justice and rationality are desirable ingredients, required by the subject, but unfortunately a right which may, at least within certain limits (which are given by the magnitude of the force that sustains it) work ("No, do not believe that everything is true, we must believe that everything is necessary, "says the priest K. in The Trial). Kafka's warning would be usable in that warn against the naive not to consider that something so serious could happen. It is a call to be wary of the liturgy and vestments (those mechanical formulas that require the use uncritically our respect for judicial decisions), to seek justice beyond the gown, because there is no guarantee against any risk that the robes do not serve the absurd, such as justices of the process. Enlightens Kafkaesque insecurity in this regard a review as bitter as she is.
could collected many such arguments, which in one way or another have been targeted throughout these pages. It is in this critical aspect, we insist, where the work of Kafka, exquisite synthesis of radicalism and balance in the transcript of that radical, has to give more play, its rigor and abundance can provide a host of objections against the established order of reality conventional. Here we have attempted to categorize some, as applied to a legal reality. You can annoy the lack of proposals for concrete action to remedy the status quo Kafka unfavorable light. We know from his life and his work that he wanted to fold, it did not. That prevent us from considering a stationary, but little else.
In an article published a few years ago, Paul Serrano Sorozábal, with undoubted success, Kafka called the "Wisdom of no." This is the kind of critical theory that late in Kafka's work, that of pure negation, not the utopian (based on an antithetical statement) which so many practitioners stores the history of thought. Kafka does not provide solutions, but has on the advantage of saving utopian leap into the void, without foundation, that almost inevitably ends up incurring utopia. Serrano Sorozábal linked this wisdom of "no" to human influence Kafkaesque received through philosophy courses taught by Anton Marty Kafka those who attended in his youth. Perhaps this statement is a little too bold in the confidence with which it occurs, but in no way is absurd. Indeed, the theories of Hume quite rightly illustrate the work of Kafka. Especially in the above, as Sorozábal points, the relationship causal, that Hume deny (more properly, which denies the possibility of accessing knowledge of it). The mere habit of associating ideas and perceptions is for Hume the only way to bear witness to the principle of causality. To put it in the words of Scottish philosopher: "In short, the need is something that exists in the mind, not objects, and it is not possible for us to form any idea about it, considered as a quality of bodies. Or we have no idea of \u200b\u200bthe need or the need is not more than the determination of the thought of moving from causes to effects and effects to causes ... " From here we derive a radical agnosticism and nihilism and skepticism, not least radicals. Kafka is also a skeptic and a nihilist. Write Sorozábal. "By dint of repeated and affirmed the denial darkness becomes absolute light Kafkaesque." He adds later: "Denial is denial of transcendence, the denial of causality (Hume), the thing itself (Kant). More specifically, denial of the possibility of knowledge. Hence, Kafka does not offer salvation not propose redemption ... " Kafka robs us why and as a result, we dropped into the void. How much we appreciate the magnitude is epistemological weapon wielded by the hand shaking and cold Czech business critical: the refutation of cause. Kafka moves us to review everything that we settled on a basis that is determined before. Do we have sufficient proof of the relationship between the data provided to us by reality and its alleged foundation? It encourages us to discover the absurd, where the convention is assumed that causality exists. The causality is not certain nor forced, it is distressing to admit it, but it is possible that, although there is nothing to explain it, you get up one morning and discover a beetle is waving its legs in the air. Law may return to the subject without fault, even imposed guilt. Discard it gives us peace, but a deceptive calm.
His translator and correspondent Milena Jesenská Franz Kafka wrote a beautiful eulogy. His words are the best closure we achieved to design for these pages.
"He was a visionary, too wise to live, too weak to want to fight, but his weakness was that of the noble and righteous men, who are unable to fight fear, misunderstanding, lack of love and hypocrisy, and aware of their disability, embarrassing and prefer to surrender to the victor.
"His knowledge of the world was extraordinary and profound. He himself was an extraordinary and profound world.
" His books have a (...) real nudity is more naturally exposed even when expressed by symbols. They dry irony and sagacity of being sensitive to see the world knew with a clarity so subtle that it could not stand his show and had to die.
"And is that Franz Kafka would not make concessions and act like the others, who take refuge in intellectual illusions, sometimes noble, indeed.
"His works are characterized by a dull expression of fear for the unknown secrets and the evident innocence of guilt among men. He was an artist of conscience who was able to stay so scrupulous where others alert the deaf, felt safe. "
1 Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany.
Fachbereich Sozialwesen (FH Fulda)
University of Applied Sciences
THEORIA Member
Critical Social Science Project
RESEARCH GROUP - Universidad Complutense.
