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this is the archive of a discussion on the franz kafka discussion list. one person posted questions about the story (message 1), some else replied (message 2), and then went back and forth for a fewmore messages. this is the chronological account of their dialoge (just follow the "next" and "previous" buttons to navigate), and the messages have not been edited or altered in any way. on a similar note, though, because of this discussion, i wrote my own interpretation of "before the law". check it out if you like.
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I like the idea of the Law as that by which we come into existence because... well, it actually is another way of phrasing the answer I have come to in my own model. I mentioned "freedom,", "righteousness" etc not as clarifications, but as names for the role it played in a model I've constructed. I felt that was adequately explained.
Just briefly, I should probably describe this model; The man does not enter the law of his own accord because he is afraid of affronting the authority of the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper bars the man with the implied physical threat. The man does not fight him because he does not believe one should have to fight. He believes the Law should be open to everyone at all times. Thus, his conception of the Law is disparate from the actual Law. He deferrs to the doorkeeper and waits for admittance, but persists in believing it to be unfair. He has admitted that either he does not perfectly understand the Law or that the doorkeeper is not in accordance with the Law, yet he will not perform tests to find out which it is. He will neither fight the doorkeeper for being in the wrong or reasses his idea that he should not be tested. Had he done either, he would have fought the gatekeeper and at least come closer to gaining entry.
The thing that keeps him out of the Law is not the doorkeeper at all, but his own conception of proper behavior. The doorkeeper is that which holds power over one because one is afraid to "become it," to sink to its methods.
Perhaps then, the Law is not freedom, but that through which, in passing, one gains freedom.
I equait my model with yours because each described the Law as an empowering passage way.
I think that if we are going to imagine the Law as a sort of birth canal through which one moves in to life, then we can't say the man was dead before he was born because we'd be using the word "born" in two distinct ways: evacuation from the mother's body, and something else.
If stepping through the first gate of the Law is a step, or one birth, into life, and the next another, then insofar as the gates are infinite, one is in a state perpetually fetal and never finally and actually born.. At the same time, though, one must change as one goes through gates. So, the rebirth entails a degree of identity shift which, in the extreme, could be called death. (Perhaps not, though, if the entity is still walking around breathing as something with no resemblance to what it was. That would be death to the initial identity, metamorphosis of the entity).
It might be difficult to communicate here. The problem with "death," "birth" and "life" is that they are versatiley used words. Sometimes people use "death" to mean "rebirth." Sometimes "life" is viewed as a succession of "births." And even among those who use the term "life" to mean successive "births" there are those who imagine the births as occurring each moment and those who imagine them as more spaced out.
I think that if we're going to use the words at all, we're going to have to define our use of them and distinguish between figurative and literal uses of them.
> 2) We know that the way into it is a way for which there is no map
> available, since the way is an unique one, that can not be represented (if
> not through an image): my entry is such that does not "fit" anybody else.
> "Hier konnte niemand sonst Einlass erhalten, denn diser Eingan war nur für
> dich bestimmt". Here, nobody else could be allowed to enter, since this
> entry was exclusively made for you.
>
> The degree to which it pertains to me turns to make it in some way equal to
> me, at least as long as I, like all others, am in an essential relation to
> it.
2) I find this interesting because the parable itself is a sort of map. Also, a map suited only to each specific individual for the reason that we each come to it wanting answers to different questions. We have, perhaps, different doorkeepers to overcome and, according to my model at least, they are the signifers of signified doors. Thus, one's essential relationship to the door is reciprocal to one's relationship to the doorkeeper. The door is specific to one for the same reason that one must overcome something to get to it: one yearns only for that which one does not posess. In a sense then, the door is the doorkeeper or.. the promise of growth held by the opposition of the doorkeeper to onself.
> An object - and only objects are susceptible of representation through
> notions, by gender and specific differentiaton - are something in face of
> which we are. Something "there".
>
> It seems that the least of the mistakes of the the man in the story - a
> fatal one, as a matter of fact - has not been that of taking the Law for
> someting merely "there".
I have trouble understanding this. He takes the Law to be something merely "there" and this keeps him from entering? I get the sense that there is much thought behind this, but can't quite infer it all. Can you describe this in more detail?
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