Kafka And Arendt: Jews ¡¤ Stranger ¡¤ Modern,

The destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis is the event that has shattered our confidence of traditional culture and triggered the reflection of the modern world. Hannah Arendt's thought is one of these profound reflections.Jewry in the modern world represents the image of strangers and pariahs. Franz Kafka is one of the earliest who has a keen awareness about this status. His wonderful novels have vividly depicted all characteristics of these strangers and their modern world. This essay attempts to interpret the image of "stranger" and its metaphorical meaning, and to uncover the link between the conception of "stranger" and the modern world, by combing Arendt's historical analysis and political theory with a reading of Kafka's works.The preface provides the explanation why and to what purpose I put Kafka's novel and Arendt's theory together. It also gives a brief introduction of their respective descriptions about Jewry, stranger and the modern world.The text is composed of four chapters. In the first two chapters, I set up the historical background of Jew's assimilation and their "fleeing into spirit world" in order to discuss, through a close analysis of Kafka's letters, diary and fictions, how "strangers" became rootless and worldlessness. In the third chapter by referring to both Kafka's magnum opus and Arendt's views on totalitarianism, I examine the link between the feeling of a stranger and totalitarianism, and the danger elements of modernity which will crystallize into a totalitarian world. The last chapter turns to Arendt's conception of "conscious pariah" and her argument about "thinking" in her late time. I discuss how the power of "thinking" can resist authority and the domination of totalitarianism.In the epilogue, I focus first on what conclusion Arendt has made from the modern history of the Jewry and then on the link between her understanding of Jewish history and her theory of political philosophy. I aim to show why she put "publicity" at the heart of her theory, and that the problem of Jewry and modernity she dealt with continues to be of contemporary importance.