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- Title
Kafka's "categorical imperative" and his sense of "being and non-being".
- Authors
Crisp, Ross
- Abstract
In this article, I begin with Kant's notion of a "categorical imperative" as a framework from which to discuss the ontology of Franz Kafka's writing. Since Kant's moral law is a device for reflecting on our responses to challenging circumstances rather than one that tells us what we should always do in every situation, I draw inferences concerning Kafka's own descriptions of his sense of being a writer in opposing phenomenal and spiritual worlds. Since Kafka cannot be understood exclusively from a Kantian perspective of autonomous will, I discuss Kafka's experiencing in terms of the reciprocal interplay of being and non-being, and his awareness of finitude and the possibility of transcendence. I argue for a humanistic-existential vision of the reading of a literary text as an encounter that responds to the alterity of the Other and which, consistent with Kafka's oeuvre, privileges being faithful to one's own experiencing.
- Subjects
CATEGORICAL imperative (Ethics); KANT, Immanuel, 1724-1804
- Publication
Janus Head, 2016, Vol 15, Issue 2, p169
- ISSN
1524-2269
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5840/jh201615232