Suffering and Forgiveness in Kafka and Post-Holocaust Antitheodicism

Abstract

Instead of accepting the existence of a moral balance or harmony in the world, both Job and Josef K. in Franz Kafka’s The Trial refuse to adjust to the conditions they find unjust. Such protagonists’ experience tells us that there can be no moral order or harmony unless human beings themselves struggle for a better world. This moral resistance to harmonious world-explanations is the heart of antitheodicism. This chapter begins with an analysis of The Trial, connecting Josef K.’s case with the kind of post-Holocaust Jewish moral antitheodicism we find in thinkers such as Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Levinas, and Richard Bernstein. Against this background, the latter half of the chapter focuses on the concept of forgiveness, especially on the basis of Vladimir Jankélévitch’s and Maurice Blanchot’s views, raising the issue of the unforgivable in a resolutely antitheodicist context.