The Hermeneutical Actuality of the Paradox in Kafka’s The Trial

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that Kafka’s The Trial, when examined for its philosophical content, makes three central claims. The novel highlights (1) the sheer inevitability of presupposing paradoxical principles in modernity; (2) the necessity of grounding those principles in a manner that combines actuality and possibility; and (3) the difficulty of such a grounding in modernity. I attempt to show that the central ethical principle in The Trial, which is presupposed by both the court and the protagonist Josef K., is the paradoxical interconnection between subjective participation and a universal standard. Given the paradoxical interconnections between subjectivity and universality, one side cannot be true unless both sides are true in their paradoxical unity. The clash between Josef K. and the court revolves around the grounding of this paradox. While Josef K. views the paradox as a possibility, the court insists on its actuality. If the narrative is accepted as factual, the novel seems to endorse possibility—every actual beginning is flawed. Nevertheless, the novel provides hermeneutical hints that expose the inadequacy of its own narrator. When the novel’s hermeneutical insights are fully brought out, actuality is redeemed. This shows that, while the paradox of the interconnection between subjectivity and universality must always remain an unexhausted possibility, it must also be grounded in hermeneutical actuality.

KEYWORDS:

• Kafka
• The Trial
• paradox
• actuality
• possibility
• hermeneutics

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also want to thank Avron Kulak, Dmitri Nikulin, and James Dodd for their insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Arendt, “Franz Kafka: A Revaluation,” 70.

^2. Kalinowski, “Fräulein Bürstner’s weiße Bluse,” 449.

^3. For a concise and informative overview of The Trial’s history of reception, see Thiher, Understanding Kafka, 133.

^4. Some of the most relevant contributions, known to me, that emphasize the text’s ambiguity and focus on the relationship between ethics and hermeneutics are: Anckaert and Burggraeve, “Crisis and Meaning,” 123–34; Thiher, Understanding Kafka, 132–53; Walser, Beschreibung einer Form, 17–122; and Elm, Die Moderne Parabel, 190–205.

^5. Thiher, Understanding Kafka, 153; Žižek, Interrogating the Real, 137. The exact words that Žižek uses are: “Kafka is in a certain way already postmodernist.”

^6. Walser, Beschreibung einer Form, 123. Anckaert and Burggraeve see in the law the principles for proper intersubjective relationships. Since these relationships involve seeing the other as irreducible to one’s own objectifying gaze, they must first be entered “in a highly individual manner.” Anckaert and Burggraeve, “Crisis and Meaning,” 132. See also Anckaert and Burggraeve, “From Crisis to Meaning,” 258–72. Thiher hopes to find a compromise between possibility and actuality through his notion of “aspect viewing.” For Thiher, The Trial invites interpretations but does not privilege one interpretation over the other. Nevertheless, in my eyes, Thiher does not sufficiently emphasize the hermeneutical activity that is needed to ground and sustain the endless possibilities for interpretation.

^7. All translations from Der Process (The Trial) are my own; and all emphases are my own unless otherwise indicated. As for the structure of the text and the arrangement of chapters, the edition of The Trial that I have used follows the Fischer Critical Edition. Hereafter page references to The Trial are cited in the text.

K.’s first hearing takes place on the fifth floor of an unmarked residential house on the outskirts of town. K. would have never found the obscure location of his hearing without sheer luck and the help of strangers. The court offices do not occupy the main floors; instead, they are in the attic, marked by a meager sign with “childish and unpracticed writing” (61). K. is never told the time of his hearing. When K. returns to the place of his hearing one week later, the hearing chamber is empty, and its lobby has reverted into a living room. K.’s execution takes place in a quarry. Neither Josef K. nor the reader ever see the official legal text. Even the introduction to the law is not seen—the prison chaplain tells, he does not read, the story. Neither the arresting guards nor their supervisor can show K. which law he violated. The arresting squad does not know if K. is even accused of violating the law. The law books contain only tawdry novels and lewd images. The painter admits that he has never read the law, and even the rules for painting judges are “varied, numerous, and, above all, secret…” (138). It seems unlikely that the lawyer has read the law. Prior to his trial, K. had lived thirty years without ever knowingly meeting a single official from the court. Besides the court’s formal officials, there are also informal confidants. Nevertheless, both the manner by which these people have become confidants and the channels through which they wield their influence are obscure. K.’s uncle happens to be an old school friend of the lawyer Huld, who happens to be friends with the court officials. One of K.’s clients at the bank happens to know the painter Titorelli, who happens to be born into a family of court painters.

^8. K. is arrested in his own apartment. The whipping of the two guards takes place in a storage closet at the bank where K. works. When K. goes in the exact opposite direction of where his first hearing took place, he once again finds court offices. The painter notes that there are court offices in nearly every attic and that “everything belongs to the court” (137). Trials, he adds, can be influenced “in the consultation room, the hallways or, for example, also here in the studio” (138). In fact, K. finds the place of his first hearing by randomly choosing a set of stairs, and despite using a fake name. When K. reluctantly visits the lawyer Huld, the director of the court offices is already there. When K. is sent to the cathedral for a business meeting, he meets the prison chaplain, an official of the court. Furthermore, every person who is neither a formal official nor an informal confidant of the court is familiar with the court. Frau Grubach and K.’s uncle are immediately aware of the distinction between the common court and the court that handles K.’s arrest. Fräulein Bürstner also concludes that K. has not committed a regular crime. The painter notes that even the young girls belong to the court. One of K.’s clients at the bank knows of his arrest. The priest claims that he had called K. to the cathedral, suggesting that both the bank’s director and the Italian businessman are somehow connected to the court. Additionally, everyone feels empowered to quote or interpret the law despite having neither seen nor read it. The arresting guards quote the law, as does the examining magistrate, the painter, and the lawyer. Neither K.’s uncle nor Frau Grubach seems to have read the law and yet they feel empowered to interpret it. The priest presents a great variety of interpretations of the introductory text to the law, many of which contradict one another.

^9. For a more detailed analysis of the court’s ambiguous spatial and temporal structure, see Karl, “Space, Time, and Enclosure,” 424–36; and Deleuze and Guatarri, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, 58–62, 72–80. For Karl, the spatial and temporal structure of the law is marked by an “opening up and closing down, closing down and opening up.” For Deleuze and Guatarri, the law in The Trial is marked by both “immediate resolution and unlimited deferral.” For a reading that reinforces the ambiguous structure of the law but views this ambiguity as a disciplinary tool, see Bogaerts, “K. as Confessional Hero,” 99–121.

^10. See Kafka, The Trial, 109. The court servants and lawyers are afraid to suggest improvements. The lawyers are not allowed to improve anything at their own expense. Only the accused suggest improvements, but any improvements would come to the detriment of their case.

^11. During K.’s arrest, the first two guards wrongfully eat K.’s breakfast and try to swindle him out of his clothes. Their supervisor falsely assumes that the three bank employees are K.’s colleagues rather than his subordinates. The examining magistrate falsely assumes that K. is a painter, while the court’s painter, despite evidence of the contrary, falsely assumes that K. wants to have himself painted or to buy paintings. The court’s public informant scares people away. In the parable Before the Law, the doorkeeper notes that he will close the door despite the consensus that he is unable to do so. Even the executioners during K.’s execution position him awkwardly and select a position “that was not even the best among the previously tried positions” (210). Furthermore, there are some behaviors that are so peculiar that they can hardly be brought under a set of consistent principles. The law student and the examining magistrate seem to be in a physically and sexually abusive relationship with the washerwoman. The lawyers are occasionally pushed down the stairs by the court officials. Despite the disturbing nature of these behaviors, it is unclear, however, whether these behaviors properly represent, or violate, the principles of the court.

^12. The two guards who misled K. are punished when K. complains about them during his first hearing. During this hearing, K. is allowed to berate the court in a long uninterrupted speech, and it is K. who rejects the right for further hearings. The public informant’s secretary acknowledges his frightening laugh and the court’s insufficient funds.

^13. See Kafka, The Trial, 7. It should be noted that K. rings the bell to inquire about his breakfast.

^14. See ibid., 16 and also 29–30: K., without proof, calls the arresting officers an “examining commission.”

^15. The arresting guards correctly point out a contradiction in K.’s comments. Nevertheless, K. dismisses their insights simply because the guards had admitted being of low rank. When talking to the guard’s supervisor, K. is initially relieved to speak to a “reasonable” man (16). Yet the supervisor mistakenly calls K.’s subordinates his colleagues, that is, he improperly applies the hierarchies. For K., this mistake “proved a gap in the supervisor’s omniscience” (20). The examining magistrate asks if K. is a painter. That is, he too confuses the hierarchical characteristics, and K. berates him. The doorkeeper deceived the man from the country—he misunderstood and overstepped his hierarchical position. In K.’s eyes, he should be removed from the court. When K. meets a fellow accused in the court offices, K. pushes him down because the man’s helplessness in the court clashes with “the superiority that he had acquired over others [elsewhere]” (65). K. denigrates Block when the latter mistakes a low judge for a high judge. K. finally breaks with Block when he, “an old merchant, a man with a long beard, begs a young girl for a favorable review” (178). K. cannot accept such hierarchical confusion. According to K.’s hierarchies, old is superior to young, women are inferior to men, and a merchant is superior to a caretaker.

^16. It could be of interest that the German term for arrest is Verhaftung, which contains the word Haftung. Haftung can mean both ‘accountability’ and ‘adhesiveness.’ In this sense, through the arrest, the court tries to make Josef K. stick to others, but K. dismisses all and sticks to no one. (Er bleibt bei niemandem haften.)

^17. Just as with the arresting supervisor, K. is desperate to receive a handshake from Frau Grubach as affirmation of his innocence. K. stays awake until almost midnight in order to tell Fräulein Bürstner of his arrest. As if looking for another person to affirm his innocence, he longingly asks the leading question: “do you believe then that I am free of guilt?” (30). Furthermore, K. tries to prevent the whipping of the two guards. When K. fires the lawyer Huld, whom he views as incapable and lazy, K. does so in person in order to hear “the not-unimportant opinion of the lawyer” (152).

^18. The chapter on Fräulein Montag is a fragment and not included among the main chapters of the novel in the Fischer Critical Edition.

^19. See ibid., 17, 160, 195. Both the arresting supervisor and the priest highlight the importance of singularity and subjective activity. K. is arrested by himself, and trials can be won only individually.

^20. K. not only turns around but runs towards the priest.

^21. This conclusion is a common theme in many readings of The Trial including in Walser, Beschreibung einer Form, 123–25; and Elm, Die Moderne Parabel, 190–205.

^22. The most comprehensive and meaningful contributions known to me are: Pascal, Kafka’s Narrators, 21–59; and O’Neill, “The Trial,” 39–56. Pascal examines only Kafka’s shorter stories and sketches. However, he acknowledges that his observations about the impersonal narrator are valid also for the three novels.

^23. O’Neill, “The Trial,” 42. See also Pascal, Kafka’s Narrators, 21–22. Pascal notes that there is a “double perspective” in which “the narrator’s objective viewpoint [is] distinct from that of the character.” Furthermore, Pascal points out that “usually the two perspectives are not clearly separate but more subtly interwoven; in many cases we are not able to be sure in what perspective a particular statement stands.”

^24. Due to the indeterminacy of the narrative position, it is difficult to assign a meaningful pronoun. For better legibility and consistency, I will use ‘he, him, his’.

^25. See also Walser, Beschreibung einer Form, 88–89. The qualifying adverbs and the use of the conditional tense are ubiquitous, as are the narrator’s spatial and temporal limitations. The narrator sees and hears only what Josef K. sees and hears. The narrator seems to move only in close proximity to Josef K. The narrator knows as little about the court as K., and understands only as much Italian as K.

^26. The narrator has no knowledge of the court apart from the limited knowledge that Josef K. has. Despite this ignorance, the narrator incessantly judges the proceedings and intentions of the court and its officials. For instance, the narrator notes that “the whipper likely would not have accepted [a] switch” (80), and that “it could not be very doubtful what [the officials] would do” (113).

^27. One could imagine the narrator’s version of the parable: “Someone must have deceived the man from the country because, without having done anything wrong, he waited all his life in front of the law but was not allowed in.”

^28. One of Kafka’s letters notes: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? … We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” Kafka, Letters to Friends, 16.

^29. See also Thiher, Understanding Kafka, 137, 145. Thiher highlights the importance of the image of the bed in Kafka’s novels. He focuses largely on the oneiric experience of the novels’ protagonists, but notes that “with satiric intent, Kafka shows that unusual ways of conducting business can be taken to be normal.”

^30. Once again, the arrest—die Verhaftung—could be read as a simple attempt to make K. stick (haften) to others.

^31. It must be said that my reading of Kafka’s The Trial is in no way a commentary on the police brutality against racial minorities that continues to occur frequently in the United States and elsewhere. My reading of The Trial judges only the characters and the society as it is described within the confines of the novel.

^32. As for the role and importance of levity, see the sections on humor in Robertson, Kafka, 39–40, and in Pascal, Kafka’s Narrators, 40–46.

^33. Frau Grubach notes that the law does not need to be understood (24). Nevertheless, her stance is not a tolerant embrace of immanent paradoxicality. Instead, in her relationship with others, Frau Grubach largely bases her behavior on the other person’s value as renter. She is obsequious towards Josef K. but unkind to Fräulein Bürstner and Fräulein Montag.

K.’s uncle jumps into action with “haste and exigency” (89) when he learns of K.’s trial. However, K.’s uncle has no knowledge of the law apart from tactical insights aimed at circumventing it. When K. and his uncle sit with the lawyer and the director of the court offices, the uncle merely holds the candle and “was enchanted both by the manner of the speech from the director and by the soft, wave-like hand movements with which he accompanied it” (96).

^34. Despite ample evidence that questions the very need for lawyers, the lawyer believes that he must “carry his clients to the verdict and beyond” (173).

^35. See ibid., 103–12.

^36. The predilection towards actuality can be regarded as a central tenet of modern philosophy and society. See, for instance, the introduction in Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, 13–30.

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Niklas Goldenthal

Niklas Goldenthal is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at The New School for Social Research, New York, where he holds the Onassis Foundation Fellowship. His work focuses on the grounding modern and postmodern thinkers attribute to their ethical, metaphysical, or hermeneutical principles. He has an M.A. in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research, and an M.A. in European Thought from University College London.