Aphorism: the Two Worlds

"Kafka," by R. Crumb

 To continue the theme from Nietzsche and Moira, the two worlds and how they relate (chance disrupting plans in the Dice Box aphorism). This theme is central to our project, organizing our introduction to electracy. Hannah Arendt provides a second example, based on a parable by Franz Kafka, "HE," from the Zurau Aphorisms.

He has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from his origin. The second blocks the road in front of him. He gives battle to both. Actually the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but also he himself, and who really knows his intentions? His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment--and this it must be admitted would require a night darker than any night has ever been yet--he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other.

The impossibility of Kafka

 These two antagonistic worlds recur in other aphorisms, sometimes identified as Heaven vs World or Earth. For example (to paraphrase), it is said that a crow could bring down Heaven, except that Heaven just means the impossibility of crows. It is worth noting the "Kafka" in Czech (kavka) means "crow," or "jackdaw" to be exact, in the corvid set, a signature pun of which Kafka himself was well aware. Arendt works with this "HE" in The Life of the Mind, her update of Kant's three Critiques, his "Copernican Revolution" in metaphysics that is foundational for electracy, in which the fundamental categories of being are grounded not in the world but in the human faculties of Thinking (Pure Reason), Willing (Practical Reason), and Judgment of Taste (aesthetics, imagination): Truth, Goodness, Beauty. Kant posed three questions based on these studies, constituting a "catechism" for all education: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? He then added a fourth question: What is man? Arendt wanted to update these Critiques and questions for the twentieth century, that is, after the Holocaust and the development of our kafkaesque mood. She completed two of the volumes (collected in Life of the Mind), and just started on the third when she died unexpectedly. We will review her reading of Kafka and their relevance for us in a new post.