Kafka's Way of Transcendence

Abstract

Metaphysics is often a matter of ups and downs. Die Erste Philosophie, writes Hans-Georg Gadamer, namlich hat es mit den obersten Prinzipien der Dinge zu tun, mit dem, was allem Seienden ursprunglich zugrunde liegt (9). With regard to its metaphors, at least, metaphysics is a to these highest and lowest concerns of philosophy. This feature of philosophical rhetoric is prominent the work of Franz Kafka (cf. Corngold 104). Kafka uses the metaphor of the way to raise questions about philosophical method (cf. Neumann 470-72). This essay explores Kafka's use of the metaphor some short prose pieces, giving particular attention to the text which Max Brod entitled Von den Gleichnissen. The last quarter of the essay compares Kafka's metaphor of the way to related topoi developed by the Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Plato. The comparison serves to situate Kafka within an important tradition of philosophical prose.' In a series of meditations which Kafka collected on numbered notecards, this one comes first: Der wahre Weg geht uber ein Seil, das nicht der gespannt ist, sondern uber dem Es scheint mehr bestimmt stolpern zu machen, als begangen zu werden (H 30). 2 The aphorism, with its nicht/sondern construction, presents itself as contrary to common opinion. A declarative sentence followed by a pointed observation, it seems to offer the generally ignored, paradoxical truth about the true way. The true way criticized here is presumably a way of transcendence. Kafka's way is set against the backdrop of a traditionally straightforward and upward path of truth. Because a transcendent way is supposed to transcendere (to climb upward, over, and across), Kafka's formulation surprises us. The strangeness of the true way strikes us through an accumulation of unexpected contrasts, especially that between in der Hohe and knapp uber dem Boden. The way