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Niels W. Bokhove Back to publications on Kafka Doctoral thesis, history of modern philosophy. Utrecht: Centrale Faculteit/Rijksuniversiteit, 1981. ABSTRACT The central issue in this thesis is, that Kafka's work at its most fundamentel level is about human finiteness and this in various directions: epistemological and ontological, anthropological, social-theoretical and ethical, logical and theological. With this I also mean the limits of consciousness, within which his literary production is enacted. Seen this way the contents of this study reflect the moulding limitation of Kafka's work. 'Human finiteness' as indication of Kafka's central theme is in its conciseness too limited. It actually controls from its negativity two problematic tension fields, neither entered, let alone passed through by Kafka: the field between the finite Ego and the finite Fellow-man and the field between the finite Ego and the Infinite. These two fields are related to each other in a particular way: entering the first field (the realisation of a truly social community) would simultaneously mean entering the second field. However, Kafka's biggest problem in this congruency was, that the religious relation would simultaneously be both a necessary condition and consequence of a realized social relation. Causally seen the religious sphere had the primate in Kafka, teleologically seen -- and this is more important in Kafka! -- the social sphere. As Kafka kept being stuck in a negative theology (not a religious nihilism!) and thus in a scepticistic dilemma, the step towards social harmony could not be made. This problematic is the subject of the central chapter, in which I try to arrive at a systematisation of Kafka's unsystematical thought and to work out Beicken's thesis, namely that Kafka's thought was essentially carried out in social categories with the help of images, motives and concepts derived from theology but stripped of their religious meaning. With this second objective -- a social and negative-theological interpretation -- I actually polemize against interpretations treating Kafka as either a religious or a social thinker. In order to realize the objective of this polemical attitude I give in Chapter 3 a survey of the existing religious-metaphysical and philosophical interpretations of Kafka's work.
Preface
1 - INTRODUCTION - Some theme's in Kafka's life
2 - ORIENTATION - Survey of Kafka interpretations
3 - LEGITIMATION - Kafka a philosopher?
4 - SYSTEMATISATION - Interpreting ordering of Kafka's thought 5 - EVALUATION - Results, tradition, desiderata
Appendices: NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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