Since its beginning, Western philosophy has assumed the universe is fully knowable, both in overview, as in detail. Modern philosophy, starting with Descartes, continued under this assumption, even taking it a bit further by assuming that the universe is knowable mathematically. Everything is thought to be measurable, transparent, clear and distinct. And this is of course a fundamental idea behind modern science.
Naturally, sceptics of this idea pop up now and then. Woken by Hume, Kant questions this assumption: he concludes there are limits to our knowledge. The existence of God for example cannot be proven, nor can the existence of free will. This step doesn’t refute the idea of a knowable universe, but limits it. Still, the tendency to want to know and measure everything continues to this day. Things that cannot be known, like in physics, or things that cannot be sensibly measured for managers, like in education, aren’t accepted. We would like to know things, and thus manage and control them.
And still, the limit Kant posited mostly applies to objective knowledge. Here is where Kafka comes in.
Kafka
This year, 2024, it’s been a hunderd years since Kafka died in 1924. It’s a Kafka year. We often hear the word ‘Kafkaesque’ used for some absurd bureaucracy. And his work gives some reason for that.
In The Trial, the protagonist is arrested and put on trial for an unknown offence. It’s a strange trial where the charges are never revealed, and the court procedures are rather odd.
In The Castle, a town is ruled from a distant castle on a hill, perhaps like Prague or Budapest. However, the townspeople are unable to access the castle nor to find out who occupies it or how they rule and according to what laws.
Other works, however, are different. For example, in Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis or The Transformation), the protagonist finds himself transformed into a huge insect.
Even for his works that feature absurd bureaucracies, you get the feeling that it’s not just about the absurdity of bureaucracy. The point is not just that bureaucracies can be absurd. A deeper, existential interpretation is possible.
Before the Law
There is a story in his novel The Trail, called ‘Before the law’. A man from the country searches for ‘The Law’ and wishes to go through a door to find it. The guard of the door however says he cannot go through right now. The man decides to wait and to try all kinds of ways of gaining access, like bribery. In spite of that, he isn’t granted access, so he waits his whole life. Shortly before his death, he asks the guard why no one else has tried to gain access. The guard answers that this door was only meant for him, and he’ll shut it now.
This story is about an inaccessibility: not about an inaccessibility of knowledge of the universe, but about an existential inaccessibility. The man fails to get access to a door meant for him alone. A door which would give access to ‘The Law’, which we can interpret as the basis of meaning for him, what gives his life meaning. Ironically, it is not this law, but this inaccessibility to it that gives his life meaning. The meaning of this man’s life is paradoxically the attempt to gain access to what remains inaccessible.
The Hunger Artist
I would like to zoom in to this paradox further with Kafka’s short story ‘The Hunger Artist.’ This story tells the tale of a hunger artist. Some time ago, there was much popular interest in this art form. At that time, our hunger artist toured from town to town with his manager. There, he was presented and he promised to abstain from food. Under public interest, he entered his cage, and often guards would be put up to ensure he didn’t eat. This manager had noticed that people lost interest after about forty days, so that was the period after which the hunger artist was carried out of his cage and allowed his meal.
Eventually, though, public interest waned, and the artist joined a circus, where he was displayed between the animal cages. Again, people lost interest, and no one kept track of how many days he was fasting. After a while, the circus noticed the dusty cage and found the artist there, now dying.
“Are you still fasting?” the supervisor asked. “When are you finally going to stop?”
– “Forgive me everything,” whispered the hunger artist.
Only the supervisor, who was pressing his ear up against the cage, understood him. “Certainly,” said the supervisor, tapping his forehead with his finger in order to indicate to the staff the state the hunger artist was in, “we forgive you.”
– “I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said the hunger artist.
“But we do admire it,” said the supervisor obligingly.
– “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist.
“Well then, we don’t admire it,” said the supervisor, “but why shouldn’t we admire it?”
– “Because I have to fast. I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist.
“Just look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do anything else?”
– “Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so that he wouldn’t miss anything, “because I couldn’t find a food that tasted good to me. If I had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.”
Those were his last words, but in his failing eyes there was still the firm, if no longer proud, conviction that he was continuing to fast.1
They buried his body after these last words, and – which is a typical Kafka joke – a young tiger was put in his cage. The tiger liked the food he was given and clearly enjoyed his life.
Nothing was to his taste
Now, at first glance, this might seem like just a rather curious short story. Let’s ask ourselves what kind of hunger this was. The key is in the punchline, his last words: he hungered, not because it’s how he made money, nor because it’s how he got attention. No, because nothing was to his taste. When he was allowed to eat after forty days, he never liked it. He did so reluctantly. And we can speculate that really nothing was to his taste. It’s not like if he were provided with Indian food or Mexican cuisine or our host’s excellent cooking, he would eat. No, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He wouldn’t have liked it either. His lack of taste concerns all foods. Really nothing is truly to his taste. His fasting is, to put it mildly, part of the essence of his existence, part of his soul. Therefore, it’s an art to him, not a job.
An existential reading
Of course, this hungering of the hunger artist is similar to religious fasting. Also, the number forty occurs repeatedly in the Bible. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years after leaving Egypt. Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert after his baptism by John the Baptist. Which is repeated in the Christian tradition of fasting for forty days before Easter. This suggests a spiritual interpretation. A spiritual hunger artist who hungers for spiritual fulfilment, but nothing is to his taste. This interpretation is not without merit. However, in the story, the forty-day period is explained purely for commercial reasons, because the public loses interest after that period.
It’s more in line with the other stories to entertain an existential rather than a spiritual reading. There can be an existential hunger, not for food, but for something more existentially meaningful. The existential hunger artist longs for existential food to satisfy him, but nothing is to his taste. Like the man in ‘Before the Law’, he cannot access anything that would satisfy him, that would give his life meaning. And again, ironically, this inaccessibility of something to his taste is in a way the central meaning of his existence.
Hunger as art
Therefore, the hunger artist makes an art form out of it. He doesn’t simply resign himself to eating without appetite, nor does he flee from it by trying to find other forms of entertainment or pleasure. He doesn’t turn to his smartphone to scroll social media while mindlessly eating food. Instead, his entire existence revolves around the art of hungering.
He allows his existential hunger to manifest. He doesn’t merely accept it; he commits to it. He doesn’t try to find a quick fix or an easy solution to repress it. No, he makes it into an art.
In the same way, we can say Kafka made a literary art out of the existential hunger, where he finds nothing to his taste – by writing about it. Making art out of it. To express and display it; without the need to resolve it with a happy ending. And, unlike the hunger artist, have fun with it, because there is a lot of humour and funny scenes in his stories.
Conclusion
In conclusion, where Kant introduces limits to our knowledge, Kafka wrote about an existential inaccessibility. His protagonists often want to desperately gain access to something which is meaningful to their existence, but they always fail, since whatever they search for is fundamentally inaccessible. There is something alien to their existence which they can never overcome. Ironically and paradoxically this desire to access what is inaccessible defines their existence. The hunger artist even makes an art out of it. As does Kafka, he turns it into funny, absurd literature.
The idea of a transparent universe, to be known by rational i.e. mathematical means has called forth into the open what cannot be known or accessed. Not only in objective knowledge, but also to the role of inaccessibility in our own existence. For Kafka, it is not rational knowledge, but is the existential inaccessibility that defines our existence. He couldn’t do anything else, because he couldn’t find any food that tasted good to him.
Brailly-Cornehotte, July 2024
- Franz Kafka, The Hunger Artist, translated by Ian Johnston (source: kafka-online.info).
See also: Franz Kafka, Gesammelte Werke. Herausg. v. Max Brod. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1983 ↩︎