From Crisis to Meaning Through ‘The Law’: Of Kafka and Genesis

Luc Anckaert and Roger Burggraeve

In the British Museum, two colossal statues are displayed as massive gatekeepers in front of the

entrance gate to the reconstructed palace room of the Assyrian kings Assournazirpal II and Salmanazar

III from Nimrod. In the centre of the rectangular throne room is the impressive bas-relief of the tree of

life. Here, the cultural tourist can satisfy his curiosity for days on, sauntering about through space and

time and imputing meaning to what he sees. But when the mute statues and the silent images are brought

to life with insufflations from the original texts that have shaped our culture, heretofore still unsuspected

new meanings can arise.

In his parable Before the Law [in his famous work, The Trial], Kafka writes about the secret of

life, and about an inordinately oversized gatekeeper. The protagonist (the “man from the country”)

reaches a “crisis” in his quest for meaning: “the secret” evades him, it is never revealed to him; and his

humanity shrinks more and more, the larger his fascination becomes with the presumed obstacles that

prevent him from accessing the mystery of life denied him. Rather, the biblical narrative of Creation in

Genesis is about a tree (of knowledge) the fruit of which is supposed to reveal the secret of Good and

Evil. And yet, here, too, human existence experiences a crisis, one introduced by the ‘Law of Life’:

Adam and Eve are seduced to transgress the Law. They thereby disqualify themselves from their God-

given humanity. And it is not in denial but precisely in this confrontational revelation that a wholly new,

intersubjective, meaning arises.

Kafka’s text appears as the opposite of the Biblical narrative of Creation. In this chapter,

therefore, we reread and compare these texts in an attempt to ascertain whether human existence itself is

not an unceasing quest for meaning, one marked by endless crises that challenge human life on earth to

acknowledge ‘the other’ and hence to open up to alterity. In our attempt to discern nuances, we seek
 2

guidance in the biblical and philosophical thought of Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas

(Anckaert 2006; Burggraeve 2009).

Franz Kafka: the deception and the quest for meaning

Kafka wrote his parable, Before the Law, in December 1914. It was included in the collection

of stories A Country Doctor (Kafka 1971). It was inserted as a hinge of sorts in The Trial, which had

been penned in the same time period but published posthumously in 1925. In the introductory dialogue,

the prison chaplain warns K. (the protagonist) against the fundamental deception in regards to the law:

“Don't fool yourself," says the priest. "How would I be fooling myself?" asks K. "You fool yourself in

court," says the priest, "it talks about this self-deceit in the opening paragraphs to the law”.

Kafka opens his parable with a scene featuring three agents: the Law, the Gatekeeper, and the

Man from the Country.

The Law

Man from the Country Gatekeeper

In front of the law there is a doorkeeper1. A man from the country comes up to the door2.

1
In the text, throughout, we will refer to him as the Gatekeeper, but will leave the word Doorkeeper in the translation intact.
2
This and all of the following excerpts were taken from the online translation at http://www.gutenberg.org and hence have no
page numbers [we chose not to ameliorate the language, as a matter of safeguarding the authenticity of the borrowings]—Ed.
 3

The Law appears as an edifice with a gate. Constantly present in The Trial, the motif of entering the

door reaches its climax. Of course the Law does not refer to a juridical code in the first place. Two

semantic fields can be linked around the term. Even if we know that Kafka was a secular Jew, we can

interpret The Law as the Torah, the legal text, which structures Jewish life. Such an interpretation is

reinforced by the consideration that, in the preceding dialogue with the prison chaplain, the text refers to

“the opening paragraphs to the Law” [“in den einleitenden Schriften zum Gesetz”]; and, moreover, the

text that follows the parable mentions “consideration for the Scripture” [“Achtung vor der Schrift”].

This fact can be linked to the Talmud-like comments, which the prison chaplain makes when he

interprets the parable. The Hebrew word Torah is translated by Rosenzweig (1968) as Weisung, the law

of life for the disoriented person3. Rosenzweig, too, links the discovery of the secret of life with a gate.

The final sentence in his The Star of Redemption is: “But whither do the wings of the gate open? You do

not know? INTO LIFE”. (Rosenzweig 2005:447)

Connotations in the text suggest a second semantic field, however. The Law is the crux where

the lines of Kafka’s iron logic meet. Kafka’s texts are typified by repeated failed access to the

quintessence of life. Thus a paralyzing deceleration, a movement of slowing down occurs (Borges

1999). The mystery of life is a receding field of burst metaphors, through which foundational meaning

escapes. Amidst these, three metaphors are important: The father figure refers to the elusive origin of

life (Kafka 1954); woman as animal of lust is an object of humiliation (Frieda, in The Castle) or a means

to power (Leni, in The Trial); and man’s death refers to authentic life [the first words, “Before the Law”

(Vor dem Gesetz), from the parable resonate in the later-appearing words “Before he dies” (“Vor seinem

Tode” – before his death)]. The metaphors evoke the temporal structuring of the intangible law of

desire: the past origin; the unattainable other in the future; and, stuck in the middle, the current truth of

life in the face of death (Anckaert 2002).

3
Strikingly reminiscent of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed – Ed.
 4

The doorkeeper stands before the law. We are given only sparse details about this doorkeeper.

He wears a fur coat with fleas in the collar; he has a big sharp nose and a long thin black Tartar beard. It

is not too sympathetic a typology of a Jewish man. The doorkeeper is seen through another person’s

stereotyping eyes. In any case the doorkeeper will function as an obstacle. ‘Man from the country’ (in

German, Mann vom Lande – Kafka’s literal translation from the Hebrew expression adam ha-Aretz) is

an alias for Joseph K. In journalists’ reports from the law court, full identity of the accused used to be

omitted by limiting mention to initials only. The initial K here additionally points to a Kafkaesque inner

emptiness, however: personal identity now reduced to a single letter (Anckaert 2009); in his search for

The Law, above and beyond himself, man loses the existence inside his self. In an important text,

Rosenzweig writes that, in periods of inhumanity, man remains himself by his given name and surname:

“I, the quite ordinary private subject, I first and last name, I dust and ashes, I am still there”

(Rosenzweig 1999a:48). Here, he resumes the human answer to the biblical address by God: hinne ni

(here I am!). In The Castle, the protagonist is represented as a disoriented land surveyor, which reminds

one of Nietzsche’s madman. (Nietzsche 1997:126-128) The surveyor is looking for a structure in society

but encounters the inaccessibility of the castle. To the inner emptiness an outer disorientation is the

response.

And he asks for entry.

It is crucial that the man, who wants to relate to the Law, spontaneously addresses the

gatekeeper. The relation to the law is mediated through the other. With regard to ‘the other’, a

fundamental deception can take place. A personal relation with one’s other, which embodies the secret

of life, is simulated to an anonymous relation with an obstacle. The initiative comes from the man from

the country, who stereotypes the other. From his own point of view, he expects the gatekeeper to be an

obstacle who might forbid him access (Girard 1953). It is important to emphasize that this is happening
 5

in the eyes of the man from the country. Kafka has elaborated this, stylistically, in a brilliant and subtle

way by using indirect speech. It is remarkable that the gatekeeper is quoted only twice – and each time,

in indirect speech. This exception merits attention.

But the doorkeeper says he can't let him in to the law right now.

Via indirect speech, an intersubjective dialogue between the two persons is avoided. From the man’s

point of view, the gatekeeper cannot possibly answer for himself in the I-form, in the first person. In

indirect speech, the gatekeeper appears as the grammatical third person. In this way access to the Law is

obstructed. ‘The other’ arises as an obstacle. To break through the deadlock, two tracks can be devised:

the theme of time; and the theme of encounter. First, there is the temporal aspect. If the man cannot go

in now, he may be allowed in, later. Access to the secret of life, in that case, would be only a matter of

time, of postponement and delay. The moment in the present here and now is deferred to the future:

The man thinks about this, and then he asks if he'll be able to go in later on.

Secondly, there is the possibility of the personal encounter. From the point of view of the man,

the gatekeeper appears in the detached objectivity of a third person. Rosenzweig writes on a crucial page

of his work that redemption takes place when “the I learns to say you to the he” (Rosenzweig 2005:292).

It is as if the ‘clammed’ subjectivity of man is ‘opened up’ when man sees its other as person or as

purpose for its own sake, and not as an object or a means to a purpose. This intersubjective reality can

only take place in the present moment of direct speech. When it is projected into the future, its

immediate meaning (and hence, the immediacy of its sense) is lost.

The man from the country chooses postponement into his future. It is in this sense that the image

of gatekeeper-qua-obstacle is emphasized. Attention to secret of life is postponed sine die – indefinitely.

The gatekeeper openly confirms this option:

'That's possible,' says the doorkeeper, 'but not now'”.

 6

In this objectified pattern of relationship, the primacy of ‘the eye’ enters the scene:

The gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the

doorkeeper has stepped to one side, so the man bends

over to try and see in.

In the Western tradition, the metaphor of ‘seeing’ refers to the metaphysics of presence. Seeing is

essentially all about in-sight, image, and representation (Deleuze 1968). Total reality is brought together

in an infinitely large present moment4. Theoria, according to Aristotle, is the highest degree of

knowledge. Western culture aims at insight or transparency. Levinas refers to this as the synoptic look

(Levinas 1979:191). It is the look which, all at once, synthesizes everything in a totalizing synopsis. A

synoptic look eliminates alterity and reduces one’s ‘other’ to objectivity. The Jewish tradition on the

other hand is a culture of listening to hear. The act of listening to hear has a fundamentally different

structure from looking to see. The word is given by ‘the other’. The look is taken by oneself so as to get

a grip on things. In listening to hear, one is essentially dependent on the other. One ‘lends the ear’ to the

word that is said by the other (Rosenzweig 1999b:87). The experience of time is itself different, as well.

To see is tantamount to freezing the present in a snapshot. In the image, the present is congealed, thus

allowing infinite duplication of principal iteration. In this respect, postponement as repetition (in a ‘more

of the same’ mode) is always possible. Listening, on the other hand, is typified by ethereal evanescence.

The present aspect of time is decisive. The material aspect of the phonation is too thin to be objectified

in an image (Derrida 1967). The voice can only be heard as an intersubjective reality. The voice cannot

bear any objectifying image.

The man from the country is tempted into seeing, after the first objectification of the gatekeeper.

He wants to look through the gate into the inner secret of the law. Precisely at that moment, when he

gives in to the temptation of the eye, he is dwarfed for the first time. The man has to stoop (!) in order to
4
It is as if one may speak here of an unending (“eternal”) now – Ed.
 7

be able to look through the gate; expanding objectification at the cost of shrinking humanity. Translated

in the reverse sense, the man’s becoming smaller signifies that the Law, which appears as prohibition, is

becoming larger, and that the gatekeeper is turning into an unassailable hindrance. As the prohibition

becomes stronger and stronger, it yields a mirror effect as outcome. Instead of one gatekeeper, all of a

sudden, three are summoned. The paroxysm of the self-multiplying ‘in-sight’ has its limit, however: the

looking soon enough becomes unbearable and, indeed, violent:

When the doorkeeper notices this he laughs and says, 'If you're tempted give it

a try, try and go in even though I say you can't. Careful though: I'm powerful.

And I'm only the lowliest of all the doormen. But there's a doorkeeper for each

of the rooms and each of them is more powerful than the last. It's more than I

can stand just to look at the third one.'

But the man is fixated by the primacy of the gaze, so that an objective and abstract interpretation

of the Law results:

The man from the country had not expected difficulties like this, the

law was supposed to be accessible for anyone at any time, he thinks,

The Law is always accessible to each and every one; it is a theoretical insight that anyone can

acquire at all times. Under the primacy of theoretical reason, everyone is put at the same level5 and the

secret of everyone’s life is the same (in a synoptic look). The experience of time in ‘the merciful now’

(kairos) is hence even elongated into an infinite, paralyzing, present. All this takes place in the ambit of

thought. It is from this theoretical (mental) attitude that the physiognomy of the gatekeeper is described.

As we have already pointed out before, the gatekeeper appears as the unkind caricature of a Jewish man:

but now he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, sees

5
See chapter 18.
 8

his big hooked nose, his long thin tartar-beard, and he decides it's better

to wait until he has permission to enter.

As a particular type of religious Jew, sketched as pars pro toto (as an unrepresentative element)

of the Jewish way of life, the dookeeper is featured as a major obstacle to one’s access to the Law. From

a Law-based perspective, one would expect to find in religion a sense indicator, a beam of orientation,

pointing to, indeed easing, access to the secret of life (Weisung). But from a theoretical angle of view,

the gatekeeper appears as objective obstacle. Farther into the text, we read about the gatekeeper’s mercy.

The man from the country is growing smaller and smaller, and is finally sitting on a stool.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down to one side of

the gate. He sits there for days and years. He tries to be allowed in time

and again and tires the doorkeeper with his requests. The doorkeeper often

questions him, asking about where he's from and many other things, but these

are disinterested questions such as great men ask, and he always ends up by

telling him he still can't let him in.

In the inclusion, which is made up by the second quote, in indirect speech, the paralyzing effect

of the situation is confirmed. The ‘theorizing look6’ fixes the situation and is fixated by it: the man keeps

shrinking, the obstacle keeps growing (“great men”), the gatekeeper still appears in third person and all

access to the law remains sealed. Postponement in time is confirmed, again, in the form of ‘not yet’.

The man had come well equipped for his journey, and uses everything,

however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. He accepts everything, but as

he does so he says, 'I'll only accept this so that you don't think there's anything

you've failed to do'. Over many years, the man watches the doorkeeper almost

without a break.
6
See Krippendorff (2001)
 9

At this moment in the story, attention to the entrance gate of the law has totally disappeared. The

look is directed toward the gatekeeper with uninterrupted insistence; the intense longing for the Law of

Life, at the outset, seems forgotten by now. There is at this stage a paralyzing fascination with the

prohibition itself. This sentiment is strengthened by attempts to bribe, to no avail.

He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and begins to think this one is the

only thing stopping him from gaining access to the law. Over the first

few years he curses his unhappy condition out loud, but later, as he

becomes old, he just grumbles to himself.

The prevalence of the prohibition is emphasized again by the fact that the gatekeeper seems to be

the only hindrance. The other doormen have faded out of the man’s field of vision. The obsession now

becomes so strong that the man even seeks to bribe the fleas. During this infantilizing activity, he turns

yet smaller again, becoming child-like.

He becomes childish, and as he has come to know even the fleas in the

doorkeeper's fur collar over the years that he has been studying him he

even asks them to help him and change the doorkeeper's mind.

After this, there is an important turn in the story. The theme of deception [Täuschung] from the

introductory dialogue is taken up once again:

Finally his eyes grow dim, and he no longer knows whether it's really getting

darker or just his eyes that are deceiving him. But he seems now to see an

inextinguishable light begin to shine from the darkness behind the door.

The light, which from the eyes of the man casts an objectifying perspective upon the real world

so that it becomes visible, darkens. At this very moment a gleam flows from the Law to the man. This
 10

paradoxical play of light leads to the question of the Täuschung: have his eyes deceived the man? In

other words, has he developed a ‘wrong’ perspective on reality, such that blindness ensues to anything

that differs from oneself?

The reversal from light to darkness constitutes the fulcrum of the text. Against the darkness of

the eyes, there appears an inextinguishable light. Kafka here is toying with the central theme from

Oedipus Rex, the tragedy: When Oedipus penetrates the dark secret of his life by stumbling on the

double insight of patricide and incest, he must cut out his own eyes. Daring to peep into the secret leads

to self-inflicted blindness.

The original question had been whether the man from the country would ever be able to penetrate

the law at all. For the man from the country, the failure of his insight means the end of his life, a span of

time that up to that moment consists in nothing but waiting. The darkness that falls on the eyes indicates

the end of this latitude. The man from the country literally does not “see the light” anymore. Obsession

with the third person becomes so fascinating as to obliterate the once direct interest in the Law. And yet

this is only the second track to the Law. The first perspective’s own hopeless impossibility leads to a

climax in the story, however.

He doesn't have long to live now. Just before he dies, he brings together

all his experience from all this time into one question which he has still

never put to the doorkeeper. He beckons to him, as he's no longer able

to raise his stiff body. The doorkeeper has to bend over deeply as the

difference in their sizes has changed very much to the disadvantage of

the man. 'What is it you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper,

'You're insatiable.'
 11

Once the overstretching of borrowed time is brushed aside by the likelihood of imminent death

(“He doesn’t have long to live now”), the ultimate question becomes possible. It is very carefully and

patiently introduced in triplicate. The opening of the sentence “before he dies” [“Vor seinem Tode” –

before his death] stylistically echoes the opening words in the parable Before the Law [Vor dem Gesetz].

‘Standing before the Law’ is here concretized as ‘standing before one’s own death’. It is remarkable that

the article from the opening sentence is replaced by a personal pronoun: he dies. Death cannot possibly

be understood as an objective fact anymore. Death is always a particular aspect of one’s existence. The

assumption of one’s own death as negation or limit is, in meaning, tantamount to the acknowledgment of

the finiteness of one’s own life. The inevitable presence of death shows the impossibility, hence also the

meaninglessness, of the ‘in-finite’ postponement. The yes to the finiteness of life is the initial condition

for every relationship with an alterity. Secondly, time postponed into the future is stuffed into a question

formulated in the present; and when the man formulates this question, he adopts a direct form of speech

for the very first time. In the face of death, he takes, as it were, responsibility for his own existence and

speaks in his own name. Thirdly, the game of large and small is repeated for the last time; and only then

is the question asked:

’Everyone wants access to the law,' says the man, 'how come,

over all these years, no-one but me has asked to be let in?'

Apart from the shift in perspective – namely speaking in one’s own name – the situation seems to

remain blocked. The man repeats the earlier idea that the Law ought to be accessible to everyone at all

times. Moreover, time is still considered as an infinite span. ”All these years” are still mentioned. Yet

the spell of the objectifying thinking appears to be broken by the radical shift in perspective. The man

from the country sees the relation to Law, longing and death, as two facets of his own relation to his

Law – as his longing, and his death. This is only possible because he now deems himself an I-person and
 12

speaks in his own name. Stylistically, the words ‘man from the country’ are being uttered in direct

speech form for the very first time.

The doorkeeper can see the man's come to his end, his hearing has

faded, and so, so that he can be heard, he shouts to him: 'Nobody

else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only

for you. Now I'll go and close it'."

At the very moment when it becomes quite clear that the law is not an impersonal object, or an

obstacle, but a personal gift, the gate is closed. The man from the country has just missed the decisive

moment of the here and now. Apparently, it is too late at this point. After this most bewildering end,

different Talmud-like interpretations are offered. Then K. dies; like a dog. The failure has a double

consequence: life ends in death; humanity is degraded into bestiality. Freud, too, understands Thanatos,

the death wish7, as a regressive yearning for one’s own destruction (Freud 1968). This wish is put to

rest, when a lower form of life replaces a higher form of life. It seems like a repetition of the adventures

of Gregor Samsa (in The Metamorphosis).

Kafka’s story evokes how every attempt at finding the Law, which could give sense and direction

to life, comes with a crisis and can result in failure. The secret of human existence is all about intimate

personal encounters. The ‘other than myself’, which is also deeply present inside myself, is not the

impersonal thing that it is oftentimes made out to be8. Man is faced with the invitation to meet his own

secret of life in a highly individual manner. In this respect, the other person is an important directional

indicator. The one who ‘takes’ this the wrong way, considers one’s fellow other to be an obstacle, and

hence misses the quintessence of the opportunity at hand.

7
As opposed to Eros, “love” (of the other, and hence – perhaps – of life, as well)—Ed.
8
See Ciprut (2008a, 293-296, especially 294)
 13

Kafka and Genesis

Kafka’s texts evoke in Rosenzweig a very strong reminiscence of the Bible (Rosenzweig 1979:

1152). Is this not an irresolvable paradox? The Bible offers stories of faith that reveal a sense, or an

orientation, so that the faithful person is directed to the most important thing. Kafka, on the other hand,

evokes the unceasing crisis of the forever missed opportunity. Every door that opens reveals yet a newer

emptiness.

In his texts, Kafka often uses ‘reversal’ as motif, or figure of speech. Kafka’s short texts

Heimkehr (Kafka 2002: Bd. Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II, 572-573; De Visscher 2002:13-

32), A Fratricide (Kafka 2002: Bd. Drucke zu Lebzeiten, 292-295), The Town Seal, Sancho Panza

(Kafka 2002: Bd. Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II, 27), Babel (Kafka 2002: Bd.

Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II, 318-230; Moses 2006) and The Silence of the Sirens (Kafka

2002: Bd. Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente II, 40-42) are but a few instances of inversions of

classical texts. Kafka’s text can be read as just such an inversion, too, for he drops identifiably implicit

hints. The text Before the Law is followed by Talmud-like comments in which Joseph K. and the

chaplain are looking for the possible meaning of the story. The literary genre of these texts refers to the

inexhaustible world of Jewish writing. In this ‘con-text’, it is not impossible to read a reference to the

first pages of the Hebrew Law or Torah in the “opening paragraphs to the law” from the dialogue with

the prison chaplain. The opening paragraphs could be correlated to the mythical texts from Genesis 1-

11. This famous cycle of stories is the beginning or the introduction to the Torah stories about the

history of God and man. In these “opening paragraphs to the law,” we read among other things the story

of Adam and Eve who eat from the proscribed fruit of the forbidden tree. The text Before the Law can be

read as the inverted sense of this biblical story. In this case, Kafka formulates a reversal of the
 14

perspective of creation wherein man becomes larger, not smaller. The mirror Kafka holds up invites

reinterpretation of the light that beams from the biblical text (Psalms 119:105).

Genesis

The stories in the second and third chapter of the book about The Beginning are a diptych. One

of the hinged panels paints the paradisiacal life in The Garden; the other, evokes human life on Earth.

They are stories about crisis; they offer different directions human life may take (Faessler 2006:173-74).

The crisis is dramatized in the story about the tree of knowledge. We focus mainly on the extracts from

the second panel, because these are inverted by Kafka, but without thereby losing sight of a number of

elements from Genesis 2 in our endeavor to safeguard the reader’s peripheral grasp of context, however.

The story is structured along a ternary dynamics. On the spot, as the restless and lonely seeker,

we find the archetype of Adam (male/female), Kafka’s ‘man from the country’ – a true Adam ha-Aretz9.

The place of the obstructing gatekeeper is taken by a seducer, the serpent. The symbolic meaning of the

Law is evoked by the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The three agents need some explanation.

3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that

the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say,

'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

The Tree

9
Literally “a man of the earth” (as distinct from modern usage and understanding of “a man of the world”) in Hebrew—Ed.
 15

Adam (male/female) the Serpent

In the stories of Creation, the metaphor of The Law is replaced by The Tree. Contrary to the

imaginary representation of unrestricted enjoyment in a ‘dolce far niente’ mode, paradisiacal existence

in Genesis 2 is characterized by the laws of objective labor and of intersubjective desire. The first law of

life gives structure to labor. Man is put in the Garden of Eden to till and to work the land:

2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him

in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

Hegel (1955) pointed out that human freedom can only be realized through mediation. The immediacy

of the self-willed existence is broken by the negative objectivity of labor. This externalization of

freedom implies the possibility of a familial, civil, and political society (Ciprut 2008a). A successful life

consists in the refusal of immediacy and in the gradual realization of self-identity through one’s other

than exclusively inside oneself (Ciprut 2008b).

The second founding law appears as a prohibition (Levinas 1999:59-63). Among the trees that

God allowed to grow in the Garden of Eden there was also "the tree of life in the midst of the garden,

and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen 2:9b). About this set up, God commands:

2:15 And the LORD God commanded the man,

"You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;

2:17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good

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and evil you shall not eat,"

At the core is the prohibition to eat. The prohibition thwarts the oral function. According to

psychoanalysis, this fact is the seat of the most archaic structuring of one’s personality. About this

function the first and decisive experience of being thwarted is realized, in that the fusional (oral)

relation is broken up, so that relations with ‘objects’ other than the mother or motherly instance become

possible. The distancing (indeed, severing) from the oral-osmotic unity allows for the relation with ‘the

other’. Eating means, however, the withdrawal of the difference between subject and object. By eating,

the very alterity of the object is destroyed and incorporated. Eating is the symbol of the reduction of the

other by the self to the self. This is a fundamental form of violence. To know the nonviolent way, on the

other hand, coincides with the ethical prohibition of cannibalism (Balmary 1986:293-296).

Next, the prohibition is about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This Hebrew phrase is

wider than the indication of the moral “good” and “bad”; it involves also the beautiful and the ugly; and

happiness and unhappiness, too. Moreover these words have a rather comprehensive meaning. To have

knowledge of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ means possession of total knowledge. But in quite the same way as for

Kafka, the verb ‘to know10’ must not be reduced to merely an intellectual form of knowing: knowledge

(yadah) can (and does) mean much more in Hebrew. It is more like a personal and intimate experience.

The structures of knowledge reflect the physical structure of the human subject. We find a strong

expression of this in Job 19:26: “and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see

God.” All this suggests that the tree symbolizes the desire of omnipotence. Only if, and for as long as,

the forbidding limit of the prohibition is respected can ‘Adam’ [as ‘person’] continue to live in Paradise.

The double law of life as the task of labor and the ban of omnipotence installs the ethical order,

which is at the very basis of intersubjective relations. At the moment the affirmation and the prohibition

are issued, there is as of yet no sign of concrete labor and intersubjectivity. It is still all about the
10
Ladaat in Hebrew―Ed.
 17

common noun ha-Adam. Man and woman have not made their appearance yet. In other words, this is

about foundational structures that will allow for human life. Levinas formulates this very clearly in his

quasi-Talmudic commentary And God created Woman: “The sexual is only an accessory of the human”

(Levinas 1994:170). Ethic precedes erotic: “The social [of responsibility] governs the erotic” (Levinas

1994:168). “Fundamental are the tasks that man accomplishes as a human being and that woman

accomplishes as a human being. They have other things to do besides cooing, and, moreover, something

else to do and more, than to limit themselves to the relations that are established because of the

differences in sex. Sexual liberation, by itself, would not be a revolution adequate to the human species”

(Levinas 1994:169).

In many mythical texts, the serpent functions as an archetype and it is frequently represented as

the seducer. In our story, it is particularly the relational meaning which is significant. The serpent is said

to have been more ‘undressed’ than any other animal of the creation. In the Hebrew text, we do indeed

read ‘aroum’. This is the singular form of ‘naked’. In the previous verse, man and his wife were said to

be ‘aroumim’, the plural form. The serpent symbolizes the fragile aspect of nakedness. Love can always

be a return to oneself. When love becomes self-centred, one’s other appears as a means – to an

experience of lust. This level reflects the meaning of the structuring prohibition. One human becomes an

edible object for another. The intended mutually balanced intersubjectivity is lost when either becomes

object of/to its other. As we saw, the structuring prohibition installs an order of rank: eroticism

presupposes ethics. Here, the prohibition acquires a new connotation. Knowledge is related to the way in

which one treats the other. Apparently, it can be done in a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ way. The good way is when

one treats one’s other as subject; the bad way is when one eats one’s other as if it were an object. So

knowledge is related to either a respectful or a pornographic relationship, here. Put differently,

knowledge is utilized to treat one’s other as either subject or object. The relationship between
 18

intersubjectivity and sheer lust can become perverted. The wriggling of the naked serpent evokes this

perversion in imagery. It is serious enough, however, to be literally a matter of life and death.

In Gen 2, man appears as species [as ha-Adam, Man(kind), when preceded by the article ha-] in

the Garden of Eden, with an order and a ban. When Man (Adam and Eve) accepts this ban and lives up

to it, they live in happiness and they deal with God, who walks in the garden and speaks with them (see

Gen 3:8), in a familiar way. This ‘state of bliss’ also appears in the fact that man and wife were at first

naked without being ashamed11 for each other:

2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

The shamelessness can be understood in two ways. First, shame is the memory of the

contingency of man. Gen 2, 25 points out that man and his wife do not cover up or deny their sexual

difference. The sexual difference confronts them with their mutual dependence, i.e., the fact that they are

not omnipotent vis-à-vis each other (Levinas 1990:34-35). This interdependence is the condition of

Creation. Sexuality is the privileged place within which to experience dependence and restriction. Yet

shame is also a trial. It is a self-imposed restriction against megalomania, or a delusion of grandeur in

lust. But as such, it can also turn into temptation. Empty seduction by the serpent will suffice for that.

The three protagonists embody the inversion of Kafka’s story: the isolated man without identity

is the reversal of the connected ha-Adam (man and wife); the empty open gate is the resplendent Tree of

Knowledge of Good and Evil as intrinsic prohibition concerning life; the obstructing gatekeeper

becomes the seducer qua the temptation to pervert the secret of life. In opposition to Kafka’s story, Man

abides with law, ‘becoming’ (by Creation) larger as a human being, not smaller like the ‘man from the

country’.

11
See chapter 15 for a very different psychiatric interpretation of this existential human phenomenon that “shame” is—Ed.
 19

The serpent first approaches the woman (Gen 3:1b). Psychoanalysts tend to see in the serpent the

symbol of the phallus. The phallus itself symbolizes sexual difference. Serpent as ‘speaking phallus’

appears to the imagination of Eve precisely because it is what Adam does possess that she does not.

Because Eve does not have Adam’s wholly evident genital organ, she is also the first to notice the

serpent and the one to be seduced. The woman, for being immersed in the problem of castration beyond

her knowing, is by far more sensitive to the mirages of the imaginary. The male element is the plus sign

in the sexualized world, whereas the female first appears as a hole, or a hollow, with a minus sign as to

the phallus. It becomes clear in the story that the serpent – the seducer – makes the woman believe that

‘not having it all’ means ‘having nothing at all’. It then becomes very difficult for her to see the

difference in meaning and to perceive what is a ‘lack’ as something ‘good’, especially as basis for – or

access to – an equal and balanced relationship. Lack as foundation for difference opens the perspective

of desire vis-à-vis the other and hence the possibility “to speak” to [or communicate12, or deal with] the

other (Balmary 1993:110-122).

The serpent has genial agility and 'finesse', apt to undermine the mechanisms of defense and the

apparently irrefutable certainties of the longing subject in subtlest ways. The seducer is a challenger.

The seducer starts his concrete job of deceit using God’s original founding prohibition:

Gen 2:16 “And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may

freely eat from every tree of the garden;" except one.

The seducer tries to transform this prohibition into a proscription that restricts human freedom.

The prohibition stipulated that one could eat of all trees, except for one. This prohibition is exaggerated

and inverted: "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Gen 3:1). At this point the

exegesis remarks that the Hebrew phrase is supposed to mean: “you shall not eat from any tree”. Thus

12
See Krippendorff (2000)
 20

the seducer insinuates that God, as the Creator of desire is (by that single founding ban) the ‘big or total

forbidder’. He would not grant man his life and freedom, and would keep him always totally dependent

just like a child; not a single ‘object’ would be accessible to satisfy man’s desire. In this way, the serpent

stealthily instils in man’s heart the first feeling of distrust in – of all things, its own Maker – God.

But the woman has seen through and somehow understood this manoeuvre very well. She reacts,

making a correction: "The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden"

(Gen 3:2). And yet her further reaction shows how much she has been confused by the words of the

serpent, all the same. She already begins to give in, by adding a few remarkable (broadening) changes to

the godly ban:

3:2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit

of the trees in the garden;

3:3 but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in

the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'"

The prohibition makes the tree more attractive; it kindles passionate desire, so that the woman

does not heed the implications of life and death in the godly ban anymore. She allows herself to be

fascinated or ‘bound’ by the serpent. To the woman’s reaction, which does refer to the fatal consequence

of the offense, Satan (the serpent) replies by linking the wherewithal of life to the consequences of the

offense: "You will not die!" This time, taking advantage of the megalomania in man’s desire, Satan

adds: "for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,

knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:5). As with Kafka, we rediscover the shift from believing in the Word

(of the Almighty Other) to seeing as “knowing”13. Moreover, the seducer in the Biblical story promises

that total vision, or full knowledge of good and evil, will make man ‘equal to God’. The text is literally:

“you will be like gods”. Again, the imaginary omnipotence of the gods is promised. The seducer
13
See Ch. 13 for the inherent conflict and its implications for scientific knowledge vis-à-vis other forms of “knowing”—Ed.
 21

conjures up the possibility for desire to transgress contingent human condition, toward achieving

superhuman (thus inhuman) pseudo-deification (Thévenot 1983:25-49).

Fascination with omnipotence elicits a number of shifts in the woman’s attitude, so that the

eating becomes ultimately acceptable. First, she avoids calling The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

by its name. Moreover, she puts the tree in the middle of the garden. In the art of description, geography

here becomes psychography. The prohibition begins to wield its fascinating power. All she can see now

is this one single tree, right in the middle; yet she avoids naming it. She even aggravates the seriousness

of the prohibition in her own eyes. Not only does she admit that God has forbidden eating from this tree,

but she adds that, indeed, it is forbidden even to touch it. The tree itself has become taboo. Hence the

uncontrollable desire to eat, not only from the fruit, but from the tree itself:

3:6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and

that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be

desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she

also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

The woman gives in to the temptation and eats from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and

Evil. In so doing, she makes use of her solidarity with the man in manner to involve him in the refusal

to obey God; hence, also in the self-reassuring sense of joint consent to the by now shared desire for

omnipotence. In this breach of the law, the meaning of being hu-man is revealed.

When the man from the country did not enter the Law, he was murdered like a dog. This meant a

double regression from humanity: the murder means the negation of life; and the bestial death, the very

negation of being human. In contrast, even though Adam and Eve were told they would face death upon

accessing the secret by eating, they are not killed and can live on as human beings (just as Satan had
 22

suggested), albeit with much greater difficulty in their intersubjective existence, further complicated by

shattered and shattering objective reality.

After the eating, the writer promptly points out the consequences:

3:7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that

they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together

and made loincloths for themselves."

The discovery of the secret, concealed in The Law, is neither a revelation of good and evil nor a

realization of the desire of omnipotence, or acquaintance with all godly, worldly, and human secrets; it

is the confrontation with nakedness. Instead of realizing the human phantasms of godly omniscience and

divine omnipotence, man discovers his own contingency now all too evident in the sheer impossibility

of his realizing the false promises of the imaginary. The disappointment that the grave offense produces

‘opens the eyes’ for the real and concrete differences that characterize both the human condition and

mankind’s finite existence. The meaning and implications of the “discovery” of nakedness by way of a

newly acquired awareness contrasts with the shameproof acquiescence of nakedness-as-fact that the

story opened with. Being aware of his own nakedness in the eyes of the opposite sex, now also man is

confronted with the issue of sexual difference. What externally even more directly appears as bodily

difference also signals and implies the relationship the human condition entertains with difference and

otherness (alterity) as such. In this relationship, man experiences his own existence as, both, restricted

and finite.

The awareness of one’s ‘naked’ finiteness, namely the discovery of the ultimate human secret, is

experienced concretely in the seemingly paradoxical human condition that reconciles potentially uniting

love and putatively alienating labor; two aspects shared by man and woman who are divided differently

by either of these activities in the framework of an existential condition common to both.

 23

3:16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pangs in

childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your

desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

Here the Jawhist14 Biblical author describes the woman in realistic context – that of tenth century

society. She is reduced to an ambiguous relationship with her children whom she will have to bear in

great pain and labor. Moreover she lives with her husband in a relationship of desire and temptation

under phallocratic supremacy. The Biblical author goes on to paint a painful picture of the way in which

the intersubjective relationship between man and woman is actually experienced in a master-slave

relationship: the woman is stuck in a dramatic deadlock, in which she is and remains the victim of

socially sanctioned androcracy. Her desire, which reaches out to her husband, is abused by him the

better to subdue her. Owing to this tragic situation, the woman attains a diabolical state of submission

and supremacy. Become a slave to the power of physical attraction, she is now at a tyrant’s mercy.

The whole First Testament is well aware of this violence, which originates from the ‘unordered’

sexuality that does not respect either difference or alterity. Phallocratic sexuality can lead to extremes of

deadly violence, as is the case for example in the story found in Judges 19-21. The sexual violence by

the inhabitants of Gibea to the wife of a Levite from Efraim leads to her death (Ju. 19:22-26). This

violence is not restricted to intersubjective relationship, however; it affects the whole community. A

collective kind of violence arises that brings with it almost the total destruction of the tribe of Benjamin

(Ju. 20:8-47). The most holy laws of hospitality, heterosexuality, and respect for a neighbour’s wife

were violated in one concrete form of violence. The whole society was affected. And yet this tragedy is

not fatal. In spite of the potential perversion of desire, woman is acknowledged by man as mother, as a

14
In Genesis, there are four different Biblical authors/redactors: the jawhist, the elohist, the deuteronomist, and the priest.
 24

fundamental element in mankind’s life on earth. Once again, woman becomes linked to the godly act of

creation:

3:20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

4:1 Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain,

saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD."

Procreation is not only the restoration of the fusional unity between man and woman, but finds its truth

in the child that opens the future. This is apparent from a reading of Rashi (no date)15 in Genesis 2.

2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother

and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

This verse is often read as the indication that the sexual coitus – the act of becoming one flesh – is an

emotional-physical experience that overcomes the duality of man and woman. The sexual coitus would

mean a cosmic recovery of the lost unity of man and woman. This interpretation is compatible with the

androgynous myth by Aristophanes, narrated by Plato in his Symposium (Plato 1990: 189a-191b). Love

brings together again the two split halves of what was once one indivisible entity, whereby a return to

one’s original self follows. What this suggests implicitly is a cyclical concept of time: paradisiacal unity

–> separation –> restoration. Rashi, however, comments the verse as follows: “The child is shaped by

both of them, and that [i.e. in the child] is where their body becomes one.” Rashi prefers the model of

the ever renewed future where, in the interpersonal encounter, an unpredictable new man and a new

15
Shlomo Yitzhaki, known by the acronym Rashi (Ra-bbi Sh-lomo Y-itzhaki), was born February 22, 1040 and died July 13,
1105; a medieval French rabbi, he authored the first comprehensive commentary on the Talmud, as well as a comprehensive
commentary on the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible)―Ed.
 25

world can always come into being again and again. By comparison, for being neither created nor

procreative, sexuality is narcissistic; directed to the only future it knows of—a self-perpetuating one

(Balmary 1986:188-189).

A punitive condition related to the breached objective labor relation is allocated to man:

3:17 And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to

the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about

which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed

is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all

the days of your life;

3:18 thorns and thistles it shall bring

forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

3:19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return

to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and

to dust you shall return."

Once again, the Biblical author/redactor rationalizes the situation of the man in his contemporary

Jewish society, here, by relating his narrative to the cultural-historical situation on the ground. The labor

relation is not always a relation of self development and wealth; rather, it is often characterized by forms

of alienation. This alienation is the result of human self-insufficiency, with no bearing on any desire of

omnipotence. But it is not owing to the infringement of the fundamental Order of Creation that man is

summoned to work. Labor, originally, is neither punishment nor burden; it is actually a blessing.
 26

2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him

in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

Eventually, however, in the same way as woman will come to face the violence of man, man will

have to face battle with the land – violently. Both man and woman can become alienated in their daily

fate. Woman is mother; but she also is her husband’s slave. Man is unhappy producer but also father and

husband. Yet these relations, even when perverted, do not mean the destruction of the Order of Creation.

Perversion may mean possible inversion of the Order, but this is not necessarily preordained fate. These

relations may change; they may develop differently. This may well be the reason why the consequences

of the discovery of The Law did not lead to death in Paradise, but to life on Earth, in its concrete reality

(Basset 2007:61-77). Upon entering concrete life on Earth as a contingent being, Paradise is forever left

behind. Outside of Paradise, man and woman live on, their children are born; and, as a promise of the

future, it is these children that perform the first forms of labor:

3:23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden,

to till the ground from which he was taken.

3:24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he

placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the

way to the tree of life.

4:1 Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain,

saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD."

4:2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep,
 27

and Cain a tiller of the ground.

In Conclusion

In contrast to Kafka’s parable, Adam and Eve do enter the confrontation with the secret of their

Creation. Great things are at stake here: liberating labor alongside subjugating sexuality, the relationship

between freedom and sin, the combination of divinity and humanity. This confrontation cannot but take

place by critical offense. A crisis (krinein) arises: a break with the obvious and the evident. Thereby the

introduction of ‘the different’ occurs: the very difference of ‘the other’ emerges and materializes.

Suddenly, the paradisiacal rest is at stake.

Entering this prohibition does not lead, however, to a double reversal from humanity, namely

dying (and dying like a dog) as in Kafka, but to a realistic human capacity for meaning, characterized by

finiteness and struggle, and death (versus a paradisiacal condition of eternal if blessedly ignorant bliss).

Upon its confrontation with the secret of life, from its Biblical outset, human capacity for meaning is, as

it were, shaped in two fundamental aspects of desire: the intersubjective axis (sexuality, love, and

procreation) and the objective axis (labor). The bestowal of meaning to human desire is only achieved

by the critical mediation of, and confrontation with, The Law – namely, the very expression of otherness

that provokes newer meaning, through a crisis of the self.

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