On the question of the law

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There is a prose text by Franz Kafka from 1920 on the question of laws . It was published posthumously in 1931.

content

Kafka describes a social order in which a noble group rules the people with unknown laws . It is impossible for the people to learn anything about the laws with which they are governed. The ignorance of the legal order leads to their disregard. They are called "sham laws" or "just a game of the mind".

shape

The prose piece can best be described as a legal-sociological reflection without direct action. It is told from the “we” or “I” perspective, a rather rare perspective for Kafka. The "we" here expressly includes the community of the people in contrast to the aristocratic group.

The text consists of three paragraphs. In the first paragraph an increasingly linguistically more complicated style develops . The sober, clear style often found in Kafka does not appear here. In the second paragraph, which can be seen as the main part, all aspects of the secret laws and their significance for the people are practiced through, so to speak, in the manner of a breathless, intricate monologue. The third paragraph reproduces a statement by a writer who aims to preserve the nobility as "the only visible, undoubted law" that one does not want to bring oneself around.

Relation to other Kafka works

This prose text is related to the parable Before the Law . There a man from the country tries in vain to penetrate the sphere of the law. In the penal colony , the issue includes the fact that the delinquent does not know and should not know the law he has broken. The novel The Process contains a similar process .

On the question of the law , as well as the fragmentary prose pieces Our Town Lies ... (also known as The Rejection ) and The Troop Recruitment , were written in 1920 under the influence of Tibetan travelogues. It is Kafka's approach to describe "the social integration of the individual and the subordination under the dictates of a power apparatus of a mysterious aristocratic caste".

Interpretative approaches

  • The law does not depend on its legal text, but on its interpretation . The law is not the same for everyone and is therefore void.
  • Criticism of the resignation of the people who do not defend themselves against unfair interpretations of the law.
  • Ambivalence of the law: on the one hand control, security, morality, on the other hand oppression, implementation of the law as a godlike punishment.
  • Criticism of the authorities (symbolized by the nobility); only the nobility has the right to interpret the right. The people are here at the mercy of the nobility. The people have no law. If necessary, in the absence of alternatives, the law of the nobility must be applied to the people.
  • Criticism of religion stupidly guided by an authority .
  • The people prefer to submit to arbitrary laws than to lose the supposed security, security and certainty that these laws bring with them. This suggests an anti-anarchic attitude.
  • Still, there is hope that the law will one day be in the hands of the people, suggesting a weak longing for democracy or socialism .

expenditure

  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • The stories. Original version, edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Legacy writings and fragments II. Edited by Jost Schillemeit, Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 1992, pp. 270–273.

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Kafka Complete Stories . S. Fischer Verlag 580, ISBN 3-596-21078-X , p. 405.
  2. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography . Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 , p. 411
  3. ↑ Peter-André Alt, p. 411.
  4. ↑ Peter-André Alt, p. 579.

Web links

Wikisource: On the question of laws  - sources and full texts