Kafka is an ethical, not an aesthetic, writer. There is no conclusion to his books. The Castle was actually unfinished, but what ending could there be to it? And there is some doubt about the proper order of the chapters in The Trial–it does not really seem to matter very much in which order you read them, since the book as a whole does not get you anywhere. (An uncharitable reader might disagree, and say that it throws fresh light on the Judiciary.) In this it is faithful to life as we actually experience it. There is no 'happy ending' or 'tragic ending' or 'comic ending' to life, only a 'dead ending'–and then we start again. We suffer, because we refuse to be reconciled with this lamentable fact; and even though we may say that life is meaningless we continue to think and act as if it had a meaning. Kafka's heroes (or hero, 'K.'–himself and not himself) obstinately persist in making efforts that they understand perfectly well are quite pointless–and this with the most natural air in the world. And, after all, what else can one do? Notice, in The Trial, how the notion of guilt is taken for granted. K. does not question the fact that he is guilty, even though he does not know of what he is guilty–he makes no attempt to discover the charge against him, but only to arrange for his defence. For both Kierkegaard and Heidegger, guilt is fundamental in human existence. (And it is only the Buddha who tells us the charge against us–avijjā.) . Nanavira Thera
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  2. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett
  3. Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the... - Betty Friedan
  4. I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100. - Woody Allen
  5. We are gods with anuses. - Ernest Becker
More Quotes By Nanavira Thera
  1. Listening to Beethoven also is sensuality, but when you have said 'sex' you have said all. A man who can give up sex can give up Beethoven.
  2. People, for the most part, live in the objective-immediate mode (discussed earlier). This means that they are totally absorbed in and identified with positive worldly interests and projects, of which there is an unending variety. That is to say, although they differ from one another...
  3. The relationship between these four attitudes–objectivity, immediacy, subjectivity, and reflexion–is worth consideration. At first sight it might seem that there is no difference between immediacy and subjectivity, or between objectivity and reflexion. Subjectivity and objectivity, certainly, are opposed; and so are immediacy and reflexion. But...
  4. But perhaps the most celebrated of these auto-incendiaries is Kalanos. You will remember, no doubt, that Kalanos (the Greek version of the Sanskrit Kalyāna) was an Indian ascetic–though not a Buddhist–who accompanied Alexander's army on its withdrawal from India. At a certain moment he announced...
  5. It is customary, in England at least, for Coroners' courts to give the verdict 'Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed'. This insult automatically puts the victim in the wrong and reassures Society that all is for the best in the best of...
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