I remember reading this when I was a teenager. I saw the guard of the law as an oppression of individuality and glory. The man didn't reach his glory because he was a coward. Now I see the issue as ego. The man enters alone. He waits alone. He thought there would be glory if he did all the things right. When the guard tells him the beyond was intended only for him, he means "you intended it only for you. Why wouldn't you bring homies with you?" By closing himself off to others and not sharing his life and dreams, he's left with an impossible and narrow route.
To me it isn't about law or order. It's about the rules of this plane of existence. As long as you are abiding by rationalism, you will never see the overarching truth. The traveler must advance alone, because part of the logic that limits him is the belief that there is more than the self.
I’ve always thought of it as the unattainability of justice or the Law. There is no centralized place where we can find it wholesale. It’s a rhizome, a matrix of institutions, ideas and traditions. It’s not a thing, but a relation of things. It’s a mirage.
Exactly. The idea of "the Law" is nebulous, not tangible. Something constructed by institutions and systems that benefit from the all perceiving the concept in a specific way. We strive to attain something Real in the idea of the Law, beyond ourselves, when it is actually conceived by generations of systemic authority.
This book helped me a lot. Once I was at a sales meeting. There was a sales guru at the front of the meeting room at some cheesy hotel giving his presentation. He held up a $20 bill & asked "how do you get this $20?" No one answered. He asked again. A light bulb went off in my head. I walked up to him & took the $20 out of his hand. THAT is how I got the $20!
i agree, most kaflka´s characters give value to certain things and goals and by doing that they create a paralell universe that ends up nowhere. It rises the question of what we are living for, why we do what we do.
I think the story is deliberately ambiguous, as ambiguous as life, and justice, and existence themselves. The thing that occurs to me out of all of this, is that he never attempts to defy the god. He simply obeys, never tests limits, never dares the god to stop him. That to me seems the most significant aspect of the story.
So people will tell you you can't and intimidate you and keep you from your dreams, but all he really had to do was go through and the guard wouldn't have stopped him. In other words, DO IT! DON'T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS. SO JUST DO IT!
@@krystiankowalski7335 I believe it's about futility of fighting against fate. When something is not meant to be, it can't be achieved no matter how hard you try.
I think Kafka agrees with Foucault: society doesn't approach you as a fully-formed, independent identity in order to snatch that independence or "change who you really are." Rather, your identity is continually formed by your negotiations with authority and society -- an authority and society with which you ultimately want to "be at peace with," somehow. B.A. gave me this interpretation.
@@juliusebola9389 In the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire, the "a" being the small other ("autre"), a projection or reflection of the ego made to symbolise otherness, like a specular image, as opposed to the big Other (always capitalised as "A") which represents otherness itself. It is sometimes called the object cause of desire, as it is the force that induces desire towards any particular object. Lacan always insisted that the term should remain untranslated, "thus acquiring the status of an algebraic sign" (Écrits).
What does it mean to gain admittance to the law? I assume it means that we are lied to and told we have a say about what the law is through democracy via voting or to become involved with legislation or enforcement. The guard seems to be saying that one must authorize themselves by applying their will. One can either use force or persuasion.
Everyone is missing the point. There was nothing behind the door, anyway. Desires exists only to go unfulfilled. Hope exists only to be crushed. That's the horror of life.
Intended for him by who I wonder? The “law” is the only thing the man ever strives to attain. But he never can attain it, under any circumstances. He finds this out too late. He wastes his life expecting satisfaction to come once he attains it. Whether he would, if he did is irrelevant, because he can’t. I need a beer.
Is he saying that the law is purely the product of social convention and that it really has no basis in anything other than the monopoly on force held by those who either attempted to gain that monopoly or inherited it? In other words, the law is only the law because we abide by it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Our entire lives are conditioned by social convention. These conventions can exist because they are imposed and backed by the threat of institutionalized violence which justifies itself through "the law." We can't know anything outside of this, since it's structured all our social interactions with others and provided the totality of our experiences. It is the basis of our understanding of reality. But this whole arrangement, while real enough, can only exist because of what is not real, but imaginary. The origin of reality is in fantasy. What we believe is real is only the imitation of the imagined.
Divided Line I've heard a version where "the Law" is substituted with "the truth." It starts with "At the threshold of truth, sits a gatekeeper." My thinking is that my human condition is similar to a faceless bureaucracy, where a guard keeps me from accepting certain truths and understandings about myself. However, my truth is mine and mine alone to discover, and that gatekeeper is an aspect of myself that guards the borders of what define me.
gpanicc That's interesting. In Plato, the link between "law" and "truth" is explicit. This is why the last and longest dialogue he wrote was called Laws. The law, of course, is always supposed to reflect truth, either the truth of human nature or some moral truth, etc. And he explains that what is true for the individual "soul" (meaning psyche or consciousness) is also true for the collection of souls that make up the nation, tribe, or "city" governed by the state. The micro reflects the macro and vice versa, the different parts of the soul and their relationship with each other mirrors the different parts of the state and their relationship with each other. So "law" has this precise double meaning in Plato, as it also means "truth" in what he calls the "well ordered" collective of state or n the individual soul. So I wonder if you can read the Trial and the Republic in the same way. It can either be about public and civic life or these characters can be used as symbols to represent the different parts of the interior psychology of the individual.
gpanicc Here's an interesting interpretation: courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/BeforeTheLaw.html Oh and look at this. :D Kafka was a "voracious reader of Plato" for most of his life. books.google.com/books?id=gqcKT5_G78YC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=kafka+plato&source=bl&ots=0uqbv5q9O1&sig=l958l-bKtWHMeC7kQ8X49PAK-iI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Hng6VamPLonxoASQq4Bw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=kafka%20plato&f=false Interesting!
Há milhares de interpretações sobre o texto...Mas, como seria se "o guarda" fosse parte do próprio homem? uma das Profundezas do Ego, que ao invés de fazer do Homem -divino ( SuperEgo) , o "Dono da Lei, ele o sub-estima?! ( Ego) *Podem reproduzir com seus nomes, ( Egos) Eu nao me importo, pois sou a Fonte.
The meaning of this is mockery of obedience, a first and only obligation from God. That parabole shows that it's fruitless to be obedient and follow the orders from a Supreme. The poor man dies never gaining the Understanding he strived. This is a MOCKERY of obedience and an encouragement to rebel against authority. Kafka turned to atheism later in his life and it resonates in his works.
Yeah, but the point is that rebellion is doomed to failure. Every door and hall is guarded and each is more powerful than the last. There's no understanding at the other end of it, or if there is, we'll never know it because we can never hope to defeat all the guards and grasp it for ourselves.
This fable sounds almost kind of Buddhist for me. The way to the Law, the Happiness, the Enlightenment, is always open for you. But your own flawed logic and the blurred lens of the physical world through which we observe the reality obscure this way from you, making you search for alternative paths, of which there are none. You bribe yourself with consumerism, you withstand the life's ordeals, waiting for nonexistent rewards - and only at the dusk of your life do you realise your mistake.
For some reason, a lot of people miss the bit about more guards, each more powerful than the last. The implication is that there is no end to the guards, no way to defeat them all and "attain the law" for yourself. We're left analyzing the problem forever, or at least until we die, because there is no way to solve it. In Buddhism, enlightenment is possible. It's the whole point. In Kafka's parable, however, it's not possible. We're even left to wonder if there is a law to grasp in the first place, since nobody could know one way or the other if there is no way to defeat all the guards. It's like the lyric in that old Meat Puppets song, "there's nothing at the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds."
God has instilled in our minds the illusion of the possibility of obtaining answers, in order to make us suffer, so that we then must beg him to stop our suffering. This is sadism of the highest order, and we ought not to engage in it.
But the law doesn't represent our hopes and dreams. The law is the law of god. The law of the father with all the Freudian undertones. The law is seeking after right action in observance of God's commandments. The parable is like waiting for Godot. The man is abadoned in an indifferent world and someday never does come. At the end of No Country for Old Men the old sheriff says, "I always thought that when I got older God would sorta come into my life. He didn't." It's the same for all of us. God ain't showing up and saving the day. Because gods law doesn't exist and so there's nothing he could have done, any of us can do to appease Him.
14 лет назад+3
This is the best summarizing of Christianity ever told. The "law" is intended for everyone, but that is a lie. Only the "few" get to attain it. That is the Christian religion in a nutshell. It is perverse and pathetic.
I reckon Kafka must have had the same experience I have just had with embassy staff.
This is TYPICAL of my experiences with ALL bureaucratic offices in the Philippines.
I remember reading this when I was a teenager. I saw the guard of the law as an oppression of individuality and glory. The man didn't reach his glory because he was a coward.
Now I see the issue as ego. The man enters alone. He waits alone. He thought there would be glory if he did all the things right. When the guard tells him the beyond was intended only for him, he means "you intended it only for you. Why wouldn't you bring homies with you?" By closing himself off to others and not sharing his life and dreams, he's left with an impossible and narrow route.
To me it isn't about law or order. It's about the rules of this plane of existence. As long as you are abiding by rationalism, you will never see the overarching truth. The traveler must advance alone, because part of the logic that limits him is the belief that there is more than the self.
I’ve always thought of it as the unattainability of justice or the Law. There is no centralized place where we can find it wholesale. It’s a rhizome, a matrix of institutions, ideas and traditions. It’s not a thing, but a relation of things. It’s a mirage.
Exactly. The idea of "the Law" is nebulous, not tangible. Something constructed by institutions and systems that benefit from the all perceiving the concept in a specific way. We strive to attain something Real in the idea of the Law, beyond ourselves, when it is actually conceived by generations of systemic authority.
This book helped me a lot. Once I was at a sales meeting. There was a sales guru at the front of the meeting room at some cheesy hotel giving his presentation. He held up a $20 bill & asked "how do you get this $20?" No one answered. He asked again. A light bulb went off in my head. I walked up to him & took the $20 out of his hand. THAT is how I got the $20!
This door was intended only for you.
And now I am going to close it.
i agree, most kaflka´s characters give value to certain things and goals and by doing that they create a paralell universe that ends up nowhere. It rises the question of what we are living for, why we do what we do.
The Trial, is the Greatest movie ever made, Thank you to anyone involved.
I think the story is deliberately ambiguous, as ambiguous as life, and justice, and existence themselves. The thing that occurs to me out of all of this, is that he never attempts to defy the god. He simply obeys, never tests limits, never dares the god to stop him. That to me seems the most significant aspect of the story.
So people will tell you you can't and intimidate you and keep you from your dreams, but all he really had to do was go through and the guard wouldn't have stopped him. In other words, DO IT! DON'T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS. SO JUST DO IT!
Not what its about
@@sethymes5984What is it about then?
@@krystiankowalski7335 I believe it's about futility of fighting against fate. When something is not meant to be, it can't be achieved no matter how hard you try.
Orson Welles was born 104 years ago today!! : )
The door is here, right now, in front of one-self. The guard is time and the other. Break through time and the other and enter the door.
I read this purposefully the night before I began law school and it came terribly true.
This was a nightmare :(
"For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified."
Nice work!! But..just a curiosity..is orson welles himself the reading voice in this vid??
Yes.
I think Kafka agrees with Foucault: society doesn't approach you as a fully-formed, independent identity in order to snatch that independence or "change who you really are." Rather, your identity is continually formed by your negotiations with authority and society -- an authority and society with which you ultimately want to "be at peace with," somehow. B.A. gave me this interpretation.
The law is Lacan's objet petit a. Reading it through this understanding explains it totally.
It's really a shame you didn't explain it.
@@juliusebola9389 In the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire, the "a" being the small other ("autre"), a projection or reflection of the ego made to symbolise otherness, like a specular image, as opposed to the big Other (always capitalised as "A") which represents otherness itself. It is sometimes called the object cause of desire, as it is the force that induces desire towards any particular object. Lacan always insisted that the term should remain untranslated, "thus acquiring the status of an algebraic sign" (Écrits).
sounds like my life
before the law = waiting for godot
What does it mean to gain admittance to the law?
I assume it means that we are lied to and told we have a say about what the law is through democracy via voting or to become involved with legislation or enforcement.
The guard seems to be saying that one must authorize themselves by applying their will.
One can either use force or persuasion.
The man from the country tried persuasion.
I have figured it out
Everyone is missing the point. There was nothing behind the door, anyway. Desires exists only to go unfulfilled. Hope exists only to be crushed. That's the horror of life.
I hope you add this comment to every video you watch on youtube.
MrRandomname010101 Just because you haven't been able to realize the true nature of the doorkeeper, doesn't mean that there is no Law.
There could be anything behind thr door. 'The law' is just an example for something to seek.
@@herculesphillips1251 I want it on a t-shirt
@cuklg Adagio in G minor by Tomaso Albinoni
Intended for him by who I wonder?
The “law” is the only thing the man ever strives to attain.
But he never can attain it, under any circumstances. He finds this out too late.
He wastes his life expecting satisfaction to come once he attains it. Whether he would, if he did is irrelevant, because he can’t.
I need a beer.
I hope you got your beer mate!
All the more reason to pursue grace, but not lawlessly.
Is he saying that the law is purely the product of social convention and that it really has no basis in anything other than the monopoly on force held by those who either attempted to gain that monopoly or inherited it? In other words, the law is only the law because we abide by it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
Our entire lives are conditioned by social convention. These conventions can exist because they are imposed and backed by the threat of institutionalized violence which justifies itself through "the law."
We can't know anything outside of this, since it's structured all our social interactions with others and provided the totality of our experiences. It is the basis of our understanding of reality. But this whole arrangement, while real enough, can only exist because of what is not real, but imaginary. The origin of reality is in fantasy. What we believe is real is only the imitation of the imagined.
Divided Line I've heard a version where "the Law" is substituted with "the truth." It starts with "At the threshold of truth, sits a gatekeeper." My thinking is that my human condition is similar to a faceless bureaucracy, where a guard keeps me from accepting certain truths and understandings about myself. However, my truth is mine and mine alone to discover, and that gatekeeper is an aspect of myself that guards the borders of what define me.
gpanicc That's interesting. In Plato, the link between "law" and "truth" is explicit. This is why the last and longest dialogue he wrote was called Laws. The law, of course, is always supposed to reflect truth, either the truth of human nature or some moral truth, etc.
And he explains that what is true for the individual "soul" (meaning psyche or consciousness) is also true for the collection of souls that make up the nation, tribe, or "city" governed by the state. The micro reflects the macro and vice versa, the different parts of the soul and their relationship with each other mirrors the different parts of the state and their relationship with each other.
So "law" has this precise double meaning in Plato, as it also means "truth" in what he calls the "well ordered" collective of state or n the individual soul.
So I wonder if you can read the Trial and the Republic in the same way. It can either be about public and civic life or these characters can be used as symbols to represent the different parts of the interior psychology of the individual.
gpanicc Here's an interesting interpretation:
courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/BeforeTheLaw.html
Oh and look at this. :D Kafka was a "voracious reader of Plato" for most of his life.
books.google.com/books?id=gqcKT5_G78YC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=kafka+plato&source=bl&ots=0uqbv5q9O1&sig=l958l-bKtWHMeC7kQ8X49PAK-iI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Hng6VamPLonxoASQq4Bw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=kafka%20plato&f=false
Interesting!
Divided Line I have never read Plato. I look forward to it, especially with this connection. It's an interesting idea. Thank you for sharing.
nah
Há milhares de interpretações sobre o texto...Mas, como seria se "o guarda" fosse parte do próprio homem? uma das Profundezas do Ego, que ao invés de fazer do Homem -divino ( SuperEgo) , o "Dono da Lei, ele o sub-estima?! ( Ego)
*Podem reproduzir com seus nomes, ( Egos) Eu nao me importo, pois sou a Fonte.
Kafka is the biggest wake up about how useless the state and bureaucracy really is.
The meaning of this is mockery of obedience, a first and only obligation from God. That parabole shows that it's fruitless to be obedient and follow the orders from a Supreme. The poor man dies never gaining the Understanding he strived.
This is a MOCKERY of obedience and an encouragement to rebel against authority.
Kafka turned to atheism later in his life and it resonates in his works.
this one particularly targets the judiciary from the vision of the proletarian masses
Yeah, but the point is that rebellion is doomed to failure. Every door and hall is guarded and each is more powerful than the last. There's no understanding at the other end of it, or if there is, we'll never know it because we can never hope to defeat all the guards and grasp it for ourselves.
It has nothing to do with religion per se.
The man's mistake is that he kept asking permission. He should have just gone through the door.
+Ken Scaletta Why don't you read the book before enlightening us with your smart ass remarks
If Kafka were that simple, he would be John Green.
rhadoo32 you might as well have told us
wich is the song in the backgorund music?
Albinoni's Adagio
there are 5 people who did not attempt to gain accessto the law
now it's 9... 9 people who just don't get it.
@@Shaunasia 11 people now.
Im back again
This fable sounds almost kind of Buddhist for me. The way to the Law, the Happiness, the Enlightenment, is always open for you. But your own flawed logic and the blurred lens of the physical world through which we observe the reality obscure this way from you, making you search for alternative paths, of which there are none. You bribe yourself with consumerism, you withstand the life's ordeals, waiting for nonexistent rewards - and only at the dusk of your life do you realise your mistake.
Kafka was a nihilist, he wasn't saying that we are responsible for our own fate, he was saying pretty much the opposite.
Yeah not what its about at all
For some reason, a lot of people miss the bit about more guards, each more powerful than the last. The implication is that there is no end to the guards, no way to defeat them all and "attain the law" for yourself. We're left analyzing the problem forever, or at least until we die, because there is no way to solve it. In Buddhism, enlightenment is possible. It's the whole point. In Kafka's parable, however, it's not possible. We're even left to wonder if there is a law to grasp in the first place, since nobody could know one way or the other if there is no way to defeat all the guards. It's like the lyric in that old Meat Puppets song, "there's nothing at the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds."
pena, gostaria de legenda em português,
consegui com legenda em português, muito bom...
God has instilled in our minds the illusion of the possibility of obtaining answers, in order to make us suffer, so that we then must beg him to stop our suffering. This is sadism of the highest order, and we ought not to engage in it.
Sam Harris got me here
BRUH
@EgonSchiele2 A Fool!
But the law doesn't represent our hopes and dreams. The law is the law of god. The law of the father with all the Freudian undertones. The law is seeking after right action in observance of God's commandments. The parable is like waiting for Godot. The man is abadoned in an indifferent world and someday never does come. At the end of No Country for Old Men the old sheriff says, "I always thought that when I got older God would sorta come into my life. He didn't." It's the same for all of us. God ain't showing up and saving the day. Because gods law doesn't exist and so there's nothing he could have done, any of us can do to appease Him.
This is the best summarizing of Christianity ever told. The "law" is intended for everyone, but that is a lie. Only the "few" get to attain it. That is the Christian religion in a nutshell. It is perverse and pathetic.
[Tips fedora]
... a man comes from the country...