Hunger for eternal law: Kafka in the light of Kleist

Abstract

The article proposes a reading of Franz Kafka as a thinker of law who works with notions from moral theology rather than from modern law. It argues that this theological-moral reading of the short story «Before the Law» is made possible by taking into account the short story «A Hunger Artist» and Franz Kafka’s favorite novel, Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist. In this sense, Kafka would be a «recipient» of the notion of eternal law found in Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas, among other authors. The moral philosophy developed by Kafka would be at the limit of a supernatural reason banned by Modernity. The article also argues that contractualist or purely juridical interpretations of these works do not account for an important dimension of Kafka’s thinking on law. The author therefore proposes a reading centered on the specific theological context to which these literary works refer. The article proposes in the works studied a genealogy of three figures that illustrate a moral philosophy that transcends the critique of modern bureaucracy and addresses more intimate and infinite dimensions of the desire for justice, and that embody its impossibility of realization: the devourer, the appetent and the fasting.