Phenomenology 2005

Volume 4, Issue Part 1, 2007

Selected Essays from Northern Europe Part 1

Heidegger and Kafka Before The Law

Th is paper examines Franz Kafka’s perception of Being as it is portrayed in his novel Der Prozess against the background of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, particularly as outlined in Sein und Zeit. More specifically, it examines the notion of guilt as it focuses on the similarities and differences between Heidegger and Kafka’s project. Whereas Heidegger holds out the possibility of a non-alienated being-in-the-world, Kafka seems to suggest that this is not obtainable; that the ontological difference between beings and Being, the gap that exits between our everyday empirical knowledge of the world and a primordial truth, is beyond our reach.