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3447
Hugo Strandberg
Schuman, Rebecca, Kafka and Wittgenstein: The Case for an Analytic Modernism.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015.
153
Book Reviews CC-BY
connect The Trial, The Metamorphosis tried to find some reason behind this
and “The Judgment” to the Tractatus. nonsense. Schuman’s basic point is
In the chapter on The Trial, Schuman that this is a mistake: Wittgenstein
criticizes interpretations that focus has showed that there is no reason
on whether Josef K. is guilty or not. behind nonsense. More specifically,
The problem with such inter- Schuman’s point has to do with
pretations is, according to Schuman, Wittgenstein’s contention that there
that since Josef K. encounters logical is no such thing as ethical
contradictions again and again (as an propositions and judgments, which
example, she mentions the figure in this context means that it is not
Josef K. notices that the painter possible to make a judgment
Titorelli has incorporated a figure of concerning the relative good or evil
Justice and Victory as one into the of George’s conduct. And as
portrait of an influential judge), and Wittgenstein puts it (T § 6.5): “When
since anything follows from a logical the answer cannot be put into words,
contradiction, what makes the neither can the question be put into
judgment that Josef K. is guilty words. The riddle does not exist.” In
logically valid is logical form as such other words, the question which the
– and this form cannot be said. This interpreters of “The Judgment” has
also explains the ending of the novel, tried to answer does not exist.
when Josef K. says that he dies “like The second part of the book
a dog”: he has been deprived of that connects The Castle, “In the Penal
which makes us human, the ability to Colony” and “Josefine the Singer” to
communicate, for his death is a the Philosophical Investigations. In the
consequence of the unsayable, logical chapter on The Castle, Wittgenstein’s
form. remarks about ostensive definitions
The second chapter is basically a in the beginning of the Philosophical
discussion of the concept of Investigations are the focus of
metaphor, occasioned by the Schuman’s discussion. She writes
academic discussion of metaphors in (116): “Wittgenstein insists that this
the works of Kafka (The Metamor- entire concept [of ostensive
phosis in particular). Schuman wants definition] is an illusion.” This makes
to contribute to this discussion by it possible for her to account for K.’s
means of the notion of metaphorical problem in the novel: it is not
form she develops in the chapter, possible for him to identify himself
with reference to Wittgenstein’s as a land surveyor and be
saying/showing-distinction. In the understood, since for this to work, “I
next chapter, she discusses Kafka’s am a land surveyor” must be an
short story “The Judgment”. The fact ostensive definition.
that Georg Bendemann obeys his Having come this far, the reader
father and commits suicide strikes of Nordic Wittgenstein Review does not
the reader as nonsensical, she says, have to be told that Kafka and
and many interpreters have therefore Wittgenstein contains dubious inter-
154
Nordic Wittgenstein Review 6 (1) 2017 | pp. 153-156 | DOI 10.15845/nwr.v6i1.3447
155
Book Reviews CC-BY
156