The yield : Kafka's atheological reformation / Paul North.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

North, Paul, 1971- author.

Series:

Meridian (Stanford, Calif.)

Meridian : crossing aesthetics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924--Philosophy.

Kafka, Franz.

Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924.

Philosophical theology.

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

xx, 373 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2015]

Summary:

The Yield is a once-in-a-generation reinterpretation of the oeuvre of Franz Kafka. At the same time, it is a powerful new entry in the debates about the supposed secularity of the modern age. Kafka is one of the most admired writers of the last century, but this book presents us with a Kafka few will recognize. It does so through a fine-grained analysis of the three hundred "thoughts" the writer penned near the end of World War I, when he had just been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Since they were discovered after Kafka's death, the meaning of the so-called "Züurau aphorisms" has been open to debate. Paul North's elucidation of what amounts to Kafka's only theoretical work shows them to contain solutions to problems Europe has faced throughout modernity. Kafka offers responses to phenomena of violence, discrimination, political repression, misunderstanding, ethnic hatred, fantasies of technological progress, and the subjugation of the worker, among other problems. Reflecting on secular modernity and the theological ideas that continue to determine it, he critiques the ideas of sin, suffering, the messiah, paradise, truth, the power of art, good will, and knowledge. Kafka's controversial alternative to the bad state of affairs in his day? Rather than fight it, give in. Developing some of Kafka's arguments, The Yield describes the ways that Kafka envisions we can be good by "yielding" to our situation instead of striving for something better. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Kafka's Being and Time

§ Refutation of What Being Never Was 33

5 Toward a General Echontology 33

6 Language for Other Purposes 50

7 Possession, the Possessed 56

8 Against Having 60

9 Thing Being 67

10 What "Am" Does 72

11 Foreign That You Are 78

§ Better Weapons than Faith and Hope 84

12 Two-Sided Faith 84

13 Faith and World 91

14 Faith and Life 99

15 The Progress Idea 102

16 'Letting Fall and Yielding 108

17 A Twofold Truth-112

18 The Garden Antinomy 120

19 The Messianic Share 128

20 Kierkegaard Codicil 136

§ Excursus: For a Kafkan Logic 147

21 Two Logoi 147

22 The Logic of Sense 151

23 The Logic of Speech 165

Part II Death and the Will

§ The Problem of Our Art 177

24 Death Knowledge 177

25 Death Image 180

26 Schein zum Tode 183

27 The Illuminated Corpse 192

28 Nietzsche's Doubt 198

29 The Problem with Our Arc 205

30 The Return of the Snake 209

§ The Yield: On Forgoing Power 220

31 The Way and the Wall 220

32 No More Than 225

33 What You Are 230

34 Yielding 237

35 Pressure to Act 242

36 Subservience 247

37 Ontological Freedom 253

38 Struggle, Will, Power, Strength 263

39 Heidegger, Letting and Leaving 269

40 Childish Measures 283.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-364) and index.

ISBN:

9780804794459

0804794456

9780804796590

0804796599

OCLC:

904194628