Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2011 Just Business?: Economic Reasoning and Its Effect on Family and Law in Lessing, Kleist and Kafka Christel Inacker Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES JUST BUSINESS? ECONOMIC REASONING AND ITS EFFECT ON FAMILY AND LAW IN LESSING, KLEIST AND KAFKA By CHRISTEL INACKER A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011 The members of the committee approve the thesis of Christel Inacker defended on March 28, 2011. _______________________________________ Christian Weber Professor Directing Thesis _______________________________________ Birgit Maier-Katkin Committee Member _______________________________________ Raymond Fleming Committee Member Approved: _____________________________________ Dr. William Cloonan, Chair, Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii I dedicate this work to everyone who supported me and attempted to keep me sane through the entire writing process. I thank my colleagues for being so understanding and forgiving of me while I was working on this project. I would like to especially thank Chris Joyner for his love and patience, David Kent for always making me feel like I could do anything, and my mom, Michaela Sykes, for telling me to “suck it up” at all the right moments. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Weber for all the guidance and support he gave me, and all the time he put into helping me complete this project. He is without doubt the most influential professor I have ever had the pleasure of studying with, and I will always look up to him as a mentor. He constantly challenged me to do my best work, not just on this thesis but in the courses I took with him as well. I am eternally grateful for the wealth of knowledge I gained from him during this process and from all he has taught me over the course of my graduate work in German Literature. I would also like to thank Dr. Maier-Katkin, for having as much faith in me as she did and for encouraging me to continue my studies. I am grateful to her for introducing me to the literature she discussed in her courses, as it was usually out of my comfort zone, but very enjoyable and interesting. The themes she covered in her courses, specifically the „other‟, minority literature and German-Turkish identity, are all themes that I look forward to studying further in my career. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................1 1. TRADE AND MODERN MAN IN LESSING‟S “NATHAN DER WEISE” ........................4 2. MOTIVES AND JUSTICE IN KLEIST‟S “DER FINDLING” ...........................................14 3. THE SUBJECTIVE LAW AND WARPED JUSTICE OF KAFKA‟S “DAS URTEIL” ....25 CONCLUSION .....................................................................................................................36 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................40 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .................................................................................................42 v ABSTRACT The purpose of this work is to show the interplay between trade, law and family in Lessing‟s “Nathan der Weise,” Kleist‟s “Der Findling,” and Kafka‟s “Das Urteil,” and to show how these texts are related through that interplay. It will also be shown how these texts can be seen as works of modernity because of their inclusion of the abovementioned aspects and the way they challenge the traditional canon of their respective literary epochs. In the first chapter, it is discussed how Lessing‟s “Nathan der Weise” is the cornerstone for the movement towards modernity through the character of Nathan and his interactions with the other characters, as well as the influence of his profession on his sense of moral that affects his interactions. The second chapter discusses the different types of justice that can be seen in Kleist‟s “Findling” and how the process of justice and the family are influenced by trade and the psychology of the characters Nicolo and Piachi. In the third chapter, it is shown how the relationship and conflict between Georg and his father, as well as their professions as businessmen, in Kafka‟s “Urteil” affect the process of law, and how the law is shown as something subjective. In addition, the three works are compared to show how they are thematically interrelated and negotiate crucial topics between each other. vi INTRODUCTION At the beginning of what we today call the age of modernity, basic concepts such as the family, law, and justice became flexible due to new philosophical ideas and socio-political changes that came into existence following the Enlightenment. Consequently, these concepts required redefinition, which most notably occurred in the field of literature. It is in the literary works of authors such as Lessing, Kleist, and Kafka that the interplay between family and law is negotiated according to the logic of economic reasoning and trade. I will examine three stories by these particular authors in order to show how the process of redefining the family, law and justice progresses in the series of these stories, ranging from the Enlightenment (Lessing‟s “Nathan der Weise”) to Romanticism (Kleist‟s “Der Findling”) and early Modernism (Kafka‟s “Das Urteil”). I argue that it is precisely this specific interplay that defines these stories as works of modern fiction. Agnes Heller writes in an article entitled “Rights, Modernity, Democracy” that the “modern world is frequently described as non-traditional, in contrast with the traditional, pre-modern world” and continues to argue: Modernity has been simultaneously moving toward establishing its own traditions. Modernity appears as the executioner of all traditions only where one equates tradition with the natural artifice of pre-modernity. Whenever cultural modals have been disentangled from their original socio-political settings, moderns eagerly rush to reinterpret and assimilate them into their new, and still unnatural, alternative socio-political arrangements.1 Because these texts challenged the traditional ideals of society and law through the relationships between the abovementioned aspects, and encouraged the continued depictions of these interactions, they can be argued to be texts of modernity. The three texts I have chosen to analyze for this project all display this interplay between law, trade and family. The purpose of this project is to identify and analyze that interplay in each of the three texts and to show in the end how the three texts themselves, although from different literary epochs, are interrelated and how they can all be considered works of modernity. I will 1 Agnes Heller, „Rights, Modernity, Democracy“ in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, New York, Routledge, 1992, p. 347-348 1 compare the three texts to explore the roles of the merchant and trade in the law and justice process, as all three of the main characters in the texts share similar professions dealing with trade and the economy. The influence of trade on the family will also be discussed, mainly through the presence of a father-child conflict and the role of the adopted (and often replacement) child, and how this influences the law process in the stories as well. The evolution and progression of these themes will be assessed in how they have changed to fit each time period and each work, but also how they have remained consistent in their existence throughout time. This will mainly be shown in how each subsequent author seems to call back to his predecessors and their ideas and attitudes towards the themes of law, family and trade, and their representations of modernity. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing‟s Enlightenment drama “Nathan der Weise” is the foundation for this movement towards modernity through his depiction of a society that embraces the ideas of tolerance and a non-traditional patchwork family because of the influence of trade and economy on the characters and their sense of morality and judgment. Lessing‟s main character, the merchant Nathan, is the center of the relationships between trade, family and law through his connections with the other characters. He is the embodiment of modernity through his constant movement forward throughout the drama and his negotiation of trade, family and law with the other characters. In the drama, the characters of the Tempelherr and Saladin strive to become more like Nathan and men of modernity themselves, by breaking from their traditional roles and moving forward toward tolerance and open-mindedness. Heinrich von Kleist‟s Romantic novella “Der Findling” challenges Lessing‟s positive attitude and displays a much more negative side of the unnatural family and how the family system is disturbed by merchant profession and the justice system of a Catholic city-state. The focus of this analysis is more on the various types of justice and the characters‟ guilt, and how they influence family