The problem of our laws (Franz Kafka)
December 15th 2007 01:10
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
The problem of our laws
Our laws are not generally known; they are kept secret by the small group of nobles who rule us. We are convinced that these ancient laws are scrupulously administered; nevertheless it is an extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws that one does not know. I am not thinking of possible discrepancies that may arise in the interpretation of the laws, or of the disadvantages involved when only a few and not the whole people are allowed to have a say in their interpretation. These disadvantages are perhaps of no great importance. For the laws are very ancient; their interpretation has been the work of centuries, and has itself doubtless acquired the status of law; and though there is still a possible freedom of interpretation left, it has now become very restricted. Moreover the nobles have obviously no cause to be influenced in their interpretation by personal interests inimical to us, for the laws were made to the advantage of the nobles from the very beginning, they themselves stand above the laws, and that seems to be why the laws were entrusted exclusively into their hands. Of course, there is wisdom in that -- who doubts the wisdom of the ancient laws? -- but also hardship for us; probably that is unavoidable.
The very existence of these laws, however, is at most a matter of presumption. There is a tradition that they exist and that they are a mystery confided to the nobility, but it is not and cannot be more than a mere tradition sanctioned by age, for the essence of a secret code is that it should remain a mystery. Some of us among the people have attentively scrutinized the doings of the nobility since the earliest times and possess records made by our forefathers -- records which we have conscientiously continued -- and claim to recognize amid the countless number of facts certain main tendencies which permit of this or that historical formulation; but when in accordance with these scrupulously tested and logically ordered conclusions we seek to adjust ourselves somewhat for the present or the future, everything becomes uncertain, and our work seems only an intellectual game, for perhaps these laws that we are trying to unravel do not exist at all. There is a small party who are actually of this opinion and who try to show that, if any law exists, it can only be this: The Law is whatever the nobles do. This party see everywhere only the arbitrary acts of the nobility, and reject the popular tradition, which according to them possesses only certain trifling and incidental advantages that do not offset its heavy drawbacks, for it gives the people a false, deceptive, and overconfident security in confronting coming events. This cannot be gainsaid, but the overwhelming majority of our people account for it by the fact that the tradition is far from complete and must be more fully inquired into, that the material available, prodigious as it looks, is still too meager, and that several centuries will have to pass before it becomes really adequate. This view, so comfortless as far as the present is concerned, is lightened only by the belief that a time will eventually come when the tradition and our research into it will jointly reach their conclusion, and as it were gain a breathing space, when everything will have become clear, the law will belong to the people, and the nobility will vanish. This is not maintained in any spirit of hatred against the nobility; not at all, and by no one. We are more inclined to hate ourselves, because we have not yet shown ourselves worthy of being entrusted with the laws. And that is the real reason why the party who believe that there is no law have remained so few -- although their doctrine is in certain ways so attractive, for it unequivocally recognizes the nobility and its right to go on existing.
Actually one can express the problem only in a sort of paradox: Any party that would repudiate not only all belief in the law, but the nobility as well, would have the whole people behind it; yet no such party can come into existence, for nobody would dare to repudiate the nobility. We live on this razor's edge. A writer once summed the matter up in this way: The sole visible and indubitable law that is imposed upon us is the nobility, and must we ourselves deprive ourselves of that one law?
***
Translation by Willa and Edwin Muir from The complete short stories of Franz Kafka, edited by Nathum N Glazer (1971).
The problem of our laws was written between 1917 and 1924. It was first published (postumously) in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer (1931; pp 29-32), a collection edited by Max Brod and Hans Joachim Schoeps.
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Comment by Damo
That anarchism is the way out of the problem.
Or does he have another plan.
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Some people have interpreted the passage as anarchistic. So you're not alone in your reading.
I don't know what the most common interpretations are, but some alternatives that occur to me include: (1) that Kafka is anarchistically complaining about laws, as you suggest, but is not complaining about all laws, only unknown or arbitrary laws; and (2) that Kafka is not being anarchistic, but "aporetic"; that is, he's saying damned if you do and damned if you don't; we can't live with (unknown) laws, and we can't live without them.
Note also, that, in general, Kafka tends to be interpreted in three sorts of ways -- you can read him as political, or you can read him as psychological (talking about his relationship to his father, say), or you can read him as existentialist and talking about meaning in life, or what people should do with their lives, or people's relationships to ethics. -- So there's lots of different "laws" that the passage could be directed at.
My personal interest (though I wouldn't necessarily suggest that this is "the point" of the passage) is in the phrase "it is an extremely painful thing to be ruled by laws that one does not know", which tends to be the most commonly quoted part of it. And what's so painful about them? -- Well, I'm going to read the passage as conveying an inner life, a mindset -- the sort of interminable thinking and worrying and second guessing and despair and feeling of impotence that might affect people who are under the power of arbitrary or unknown laws.
One qualification to make... Don't forget that this is literature -- a short story, not an essay. So by its nature not only is it open to multiple interpretations, but you might refuse to read it as trying to say anything, let alone as amounting to a single point -- in the same way that you might avoid interpreting a message or a point into a piece of music, or a painting, or a sunset. (I've made some claims along this line before, for instance, in posts about theme-based criticism, and about interpreting Plato.)