{"id":58839,"date":"2024-06-24T23:32:53","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T21:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=58839"},"modified":"2024-07-04T14:56:38","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T12:56:38","slug":"understanding-the-world-not-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/understanding-the-world-not-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the World\u2014Not More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kafka and the Anti-Semitism of 2024. On the 100th Anniversary of the Writer\u2019s Death.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I have no mandate and am not a moral authority. I am just a citizen who is amazed at how we have left Jews, our fellow human beings, alone since October 7, because that is how many people are experiencing this moment. I don\u2019t understand the priorities we set. I don\u2019t know what it feels like to live with the knowledge that you are to be exterminated. Even as a student, I didn\u2019t understand why Jews were considered an enemy. Am I playing dumb? Is one allowed to say: \u201cI don’t understand\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one sentence: \u201cI don’t understand,\u201d is perpetually stated throughout the work of Franz Kafka, whose death we commemorate in 2024 for the hundredth year. \u201cI don\u2019t understand myself; I don\u2019t understand the world.\u201d Without even saying, I understand \u201cno more.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never understood them. What do I have in common with Jews?\u201d he asked himself. And added: \u201cI don\u2019t even have anything in common with myself.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are moved when Holocaust survivor Margot Friedl\u00e4nder reminds us that we are all just human beings. What does that mean? We are, indeed, not yet fully human. We don\u2019t even understand what it means to be human. We do not yet have a full consciousness of our humanness. We only know how it operates: our brain, our body, our intelligence, and we even use them outside of ourselves. But, we have not yet descended into our powerlessness. We are afraid of the abyss of not understanding. We would have to sink ourselves into the consternation of the Jews, our fellow citizens, and why they are so hated\u2014slowly, carefully, fearing that it would tear our soul apart, as if into a tomb made for the light; we would have to let ourselves go into the soul of the other. Kafka could teach us that this hesitation before judgment is the only possible moral stance for human beings today. All around us howl the sirens of snap judgments, crafty assessments, and hysterical commentaries. For Kafka, even going to the post office was a mystery. Before she was murdered in the Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp, Milena Jesensk\u00e1<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> was one of the few who understood why business-minded people were a mystery to him. When one distances themselves from human beings\u2014like Kafka\u2019s father from his son\u2019s Eastern Jewish<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> friend\u2014 because they remind them of their own weakness, the ranks must be closed off, otherwise the store wouldn\u2019t run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Entrance to Hell<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t comprehend any of the clich\u00e9s. Perhaps Judaism, historically speaking, is the threshold of a profoundly human incomprehension that we all share. Kafka said he was the end or the beginning. He saw himself as an individual. He had not caught the last corner of the Jewish prayer shawl, nor did he believe in any other external god. The student Kafka wrote that we had to stand before each other as before the entrance to hell: lovingly, reverently. Because the other would never be able to express what it looks like inside him. A Muslim also cannot fully express his experience when he goes along, almost in reflex, with the Jewish hatred arising in his fellow Muslims because otherwise, they would mistrust his standing as a Muslim. We multiply hell. We do not stop thinking in terms of collectives. We are not interested in the individual, only in our own interests. This applies to trade associations as well as to Berlinale [film festival] communities, to political parties as well as to activists. Everyone is only looking out for themselves. Thinking in terms of face-saving strategies is our silent consensus. Kafka couldn\u2019t think strategically. He didn\u2019t want to. Or wanted to no more. When he did, it went awry. Then, it all became artificial. Then, he artificially sought advice from Rudolf Steiner; then, he artificially looked for a fianc\u00e9e.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Franz Kafka, 1923, public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The conclusion of a grief that, after a long journey through life, has arrived at an attempt at forgiveness is that statement, \u201cWe are all human beings.\u201d We feel shame when facing this. But, our own morality is becoming senile. It is stirring itself. I don\u2019t want to \u201cspeak out against anti-Semitism,\u201d not even \u201cagainst hatred and agitation.\u201d Isn\u2019t everything nowadays just some form of incitement? Sometimes direct, sometimes subtle. I shy away from these phrases that only glaringly emphasize what they want to overcome. How can we morally rejuvenate ourselves? Not by occupying concepts, like occupying neighboring countries. Not by agreeing on language rules, wordings, and framings and fighting for interpretative sovereignty. Regulated speech is dead speech, and just because everyone is doing it, it seems justified and part of business acumen. But it\u2019s just a play with lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naked and Needy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We have to become as children who don\u2019t understand, who, as in Andersen\u2019s fairy tale, name what is clearly visible: the emperor is indeed naked. There is nothing that could seriously establish that a certain blood, the outward physicality of a people, must endure centuries of stigmatization. Children are astounded. What\u2019s the point? They laugh, because it\u2019s ridiculous. The child sees through our prejudices, the ascribed shells, the foolish automatism of authority. (Kafka had a laughing fit when he was promoted.) The child sees the naked, needy human being. Understanding lies in not understanding. This is where a path begins\u2014in pausing. For Milena, Kafka was a \u201cnaked man among the clothed,\u201d one \u201cwithout refuge.\u201d<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> He himself called his life the hesitation before birth. And if there was transmigration of souls, he was not yet at the lowest level. The inexhaustible number of interpretations of his body of work is not an academical statement but a moral one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must surrender to this openness when we lie naked before each other as bodies and try to read the will of the other and trust each other. But how? When does misinterpretation begin? When does abuse begin? Here, we could start with the mutual recognition of \u201cI didn\u2019t understand you,\u201d with \u201cI had nothing in common with myself,\u201d and \u201cI am the end or the beginning,\u201d just like you. I want to turn the times around with you! I want to return to the threshold. To meet not \u201cbefore\u201d and not \u201cafter\u201d Christ, but in him, in such humanness, in powerlessness, in death. In Kafka\u2019s aphorisms, the Messiah only comes \u201cwhen he will no longer be necessary.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would have to manage to no longer be identifiable but to identify with the other again and again, actively instead of passively, and under all circumstances. The decisive moment of development is everlasting, wrote Kafka, which is why all revolutionary movements are right, \u201cbecause nothing has yet happened.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> I wish that nothing will happen to the Jews, my fellow humans. I wish that no one says that this or that has rightly happened to anyone. It rightly happens for no one, even for the others. How could one of the many different human-social aspects of conflicts be valued more highly than another? From what perspective? How could one biography ever be more relevant than another, or how can lives be ranked differently? Or do I just want, like Kafka, to please all the people all the time? I want to think that we are all connected. Like a shared wound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kafka and the Anti-Semitism of 2024. On the 100th Anniversary of the Writer\u2019s Death. I have no mandate and am not a moral authority. I am just a citizen who is amazed at how we have left Jews, our fellow human beings, alone since October 7, because that is how many people are experiencing this moment. I don\u2019t understand the priorities we set. I don\u2019t know what it feels like to live with the knowledge that you are to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9164,"featured_media":58004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8848,8847,8815],"tags":[11527,11512,8824],"class_list":["post-58839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-portrait","category-world-situation","tag-english-issue-27-28-2024","tag-ausgabe-20-2024-en","tag-spotlights"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}