What is it about?
I discuss the extent to which Kafka was receptive to the spirit of Kierkegaard’s existential-phenomenology. I explore three aspects of Kafka’s reading of Kierkegaard, beginning with Kafka’s comprehension of Kierkegaard’s, and his own, ontological condition of anxiety and despair. I suggest parallels between existential therapy and the experiencing of Kafka who was, in Kierkegaard’s (1992, 2004) terminology, always in a process of becoming in which he struggled to achieve a synthesis of opposites: a rational, constricted self determined by necessity/finitude, and an expansive self represented by possibility/infinity.
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Why is it important?
Both Kafka and Kierkegaard are important writers of fiction (Kafka) and of existential philosophy (Kierkegaard) and invaluable sources for humanistic-existential psychology.
Perspectives
Kierkegaard’s insights raised questions for Kafka which prompted him to articulate his own sense of alterity; for example, in response to Kierkegaard’s rendering of Abraham’s proposed sacrifice of his son Isaac, he re-imagined Abraham’s ethical dilemma in ways that mirrored his own concerns regarding the cultural and socio-historical influences that constrained his freedom within the phenomenal world. I discuss Kafka’s fraught, uncertain subjectivity, his distrust of religious-socio-political rationalism, his (and Kierkegaard’s) experiencing of temporality contra to a traditional linear conception of time, and his reading of Kierkegaard’s Christian perspective that endorses the truth of subjectivity and the passion of faith which enables a person to endure despair.
Dr Ross Crisp
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Kafka reading Kierkegaard, August 2020, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9780429347115-20.
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