Kafka’s Thought Experiment: Reality Between Book and Spirit of Law

The author examines Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” in the context of Austrian philosophy. Austrian philosophy stands for combination of different philosophical systems and independent thinkers, as well as writers associated with the culture of the now defunct multinational Austro-Hungarian empire. Austrian philosophy has a number of distinctive features, which can be described as an anti-Kantian orientation (due to the official Catholic faith in the empire), a baroque worldview (life in endless anticipation of the end of the world), a tendency towards empiricism and an appeal to linguistic issues. Linguistic problems were particularly acute, since the official language of the Austrian Empire was German, which was not the native language of many writers. Another problem associated with language can be identified from Kafka’s work: words, according to the writer, come from the world of “false” life, and it is impossible to convey reliable information about reality. However, a significant place in this historical type of philosophizing is occupied by a thought experiment, the development of which took place in parallel directions among philosophizing “physicists” and philosophizing writers. The general context of these studies was built on a special version of Platonic idealism, implying a difficult but possible path to achieving the truth – the “world of eidos.” We consider Kafka’s story as a thought experiment with the book and spirit of the law, which shows the contradictions between the text of the law and the content hidden behind it, i.e. the gap between the literal interpretation and its moral and ethical content. In Kafka’s story, the spirit of the law has changed, but the book has remained the same. This state of affairs is characteristic not only of the artistic world of the work in question, but also of what was happening in reality – in the world of the fading Austro-Hungarian Empire.